Keep Growing

Okay, first you have to have a source of red ripe jalapeños.

If you can't buy them, you'll have to grow them. Or get given them by someone else who grew them if you're lucky.

Then you have to have either a smoker or a charcoal grill. I had a charcoal grill. Theoretically. Meaning when I went to move it out from where it's stored I found that the bottom was rusting out and the legs were falling off. But! I thought I could make it work one last time...

So I covered the bottom with slings of heavy-duty aluminum foil, made sure the legs were propped optimally, and doused the ground underneath with several buckets of water. We've had sufficient rain that all but the top inch of soil/woodchips are still very wet. I kept a bucket full of water nearby just in case.

Used the charcoal chimney to start about a dozen briquettes—just enough to support about a handful of cherry wood chips that had been soaking in water overnight. Waited until the briquettes were ashy grey and dumped them onto the bottom grate near the front.

And arranged the jalapeños on the highest cooking grate opposite the briquettes—you want them to smoke, not cook. Or at least as much as possible.

Handful of wet cherry wood chips on top of the briquettes. Wait until they begin to smoke, then close the lid.

The top vent is only open a sliver because with the foil slings the lid doesn't fit very well anyway. If you have an actual intact grill then you'll probably want to open it a bit more.

Then go do garden tasks or whatever that keep you in range of the grill so you can monitor for smoke and be sure nothing is on fire (or your janky grill collapses). In roughly 20-30 minutes, when you can't see smoke anymore, you're going to open the lid and throw another handful of soaked cherry wood chips onto the briquettes. Repeat until the desired amount of smoking has occurred. You may need to add a few more briquettes midway through. The source I looked this method up on recommended smoking for 3 hours, so that's what I did. I think it would have been fine after 2 hours though.

You can see a few of the ones closest to the heat got a bit charred after 3 hours, but that's fine. I then transferred them to my dehydrator and let it run overnight to turn them crispy instead of leathery.

My house smelled fantastic. Smoky and sweet and spicy—like barbecue sauce without the sticky.

I then removed the stems/caps (next time I'll do this before smoking...just twist them off without breaking open the pepper) and the seeds because I'm a spice-weenie.

The chickens loved the seeds. Then I ran the smoked, dried ripe jalapeños through a spice grinder. Which, since mine is old and sucks, means I also passed the results through a wire mesh strainer.

And here's the result! A bit more than half a cup of ground chipotle powder (here in a recycled minced garlic jar). This should last me quite a while (spice-weenie).

The bottom bowl is the chipotle powder, but the top is powdered red ripe poblanos. It's normally called Ancho powder but I'm not sure if that's only when the green immature poblanos are used?

-Robin Wall Kimmerer, from The “Honorable Harvest”: Lessons From an Indigenous Tradition of Giving Thanks

Seeing how much further I have to go can feel daunting and scary. I'm so far from my goals! But what's life if there isn't a journey? Along the way, we'll learn and reach new accomplishments, we might even sidetrack or change paths. We can't just look at the end when there's so much to see before we get there.

Here's to enjoying the journey!