Skip to main content

Rocotos and Spring are Here!


Friends,
Spring arrived tentatively last week but it’s been making solid gains. The weather is warming, my lawn is greening and the red and yellow rocoto peppers (capsicum pubescens) I planted a few weeks back have sprouted! I’m not much of a green thumb, however, my faith that the barren dirt in those flower pots would yield little plants is being rewarded! It goes to show life is a powerful force and you should never underestimate it. I find myself wondering how hot my batch will be (rocotos range from four to forty times hotter than jalapeños —30,000 - 100,000 SHUs— with yellow fruits reaching the higher end of the range). We shall see! I imagine a gifted chef could make a spicy jelly-filled donut with them. They might even use the black seeds as a decorative garnish on top. Too bad my baking skills are as rudimentary as my gardening talent. So, I’ll just be content to enjoy the donuts my son Pablo brought home from Dunkin’ —he got them of his own initiative! I must be doing something right.
Happy Friday!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Donut Doodle Dandy

Dear Members and Constituents, In trying to figure-out Wednesday’s cool-looking Google Doodle ( Jorge Luis Borges’ 112 th birthday ), I stumbled across a list of Google Doodles you’ll never see. This, and a Rockies game later that day, were sufficient inspiration to get my head spinning around what other doodles Google might never noodle? I’m sure you’ll probably have a few ideas of your own, but I was able to come-up with a couple. How about a former Colorado Rockies player whose unfortunate encounter with a moth put him in the news this week? The Matt Holliday doodle might look something like this… Another item which, surprisingly enough, has not been made into a doodle are donuts. Although I was slightly taken aback to find this delicious pastry has not been featured, after the initial disappointment, I decided to take matters into my own hands and take a stab at one (perhaps Google can use it next year for national donut day )… or to celebrate Greek police having “ blown a ho...

Bring your own Geiger counter!

Friends, This week’s news were literally radioactive -and I’m not talking about the fallout from the Trump-Putin summit. I’m talking mutate your DNA-exciting news. I’m talking Marie Curie-worthy news. I’m talking Geiger-counter-tilting news. I’m talking… well, you get the (glow in the dark) picture. A study about a lone wolf collared near Chernobyl and tracked on a long trek spawned the headline “ Could Chernobyl Wolves Be Spreading Mutations? ” While one can be forgiven for envisioning a flying wolf with laser eyes and a green aura about it, the disappointing story basically says most mutations are harmful to an animal’s health -and unhealthy animals are unlikely to travel 250 miles and mate with other wolves, contaminating the gene pool. So, much ado about nothing. The desire to open Rocky Flats (a nuclear weapons facility turned wildlife refuge) to the public has triggered some litigation from an environmentalist group. At st...

Habemus Donuts

Friends, On this first Friday of Leo XIV's papacy, there’s a lot we still don’t know about the new pope. As we learn more, I’m sure there will be many tomes published on the visible head of the 1.4 billion strong Catholic Church. Here are a few possible titles for books and articles to come: From Chicago to Chiclayo: an unexpected journey to Rome Leo is a Virgo, and other fun facts LEO: not just for Low-Earth Orbit anymore How White Sox became part of the papal regalia One Leo, two Leos… the Count counts popes I was going to throw one in there about his favorite foods, but it seems nobody knows. Here’s hoping the first US-born pope loves donuts (that would be a great omen for things to come). If not, Sophie Carrigan's classic, Leo's Lost Donut , would take on a whole new meaning. Happy Friday! Photo Credit: Sophie Carrigan