Sounds Great. Congrats! You've officially caught the sickness, uhh I mean obsession, I mean .... Welcome.

It's a great idea starting off with peppers that you already use in your cooking. I'll link to an easy Jalapeno hot sauce recipe, you may want to try.

What other peppers are you growing this year?

Here is a link that might be useful: Easy Jalapeno Hot Sauce aka Ugly Sauce.

Now that you've discovered a good jalapeno, next year add at least one Biker Billy. Wonderful jalapeno, hotter than the regular, and also a lot sweeter. Great jalapeno and a very big fruit too.

Congratulations. This is only my second year adding peppers with my usual group of tomatoes, both cherry and celebrity, squash, and the easiest to grow cucumbers. out of my 10 pepper plants, 5 are jalapeno. I love the ease of them;I mean, they grow in 105 degree temperatures, droughts, heavy rain, minimum pests. Even though I haven't got into growing peppers from seeds like most of these guys, I still enjoy going to the garden center each spring looking for the best looking peppers. Occasionally, I will find some 2 foot tall Bhut (ghost) pepper pants, which I have 3. Ive nursed those plants for 3 months (fighting horn worms) with only 1 pepper waiting for about a 10 degree temperature change, so the flowers will stop dropping off and I can get my Bhuts.

Keep up the good work,
Daryll

Yup, its the dirty little secret of us gardeners. Peppers are absurdly easy to grow. You stick them in the ground and forget about them for a couple months and then you get buried under yummy peppers.

Don't let it get out though. We're all pretending to be this woman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWZXoGZijH4

If you need a justification for putting them in everything, consider them little green vitamin pills. They are chock full o' nutrients!

I made a pasta sauce the other day that was killer.
just about any peppers. I used:
2-4 cubanelles
2 cowhorn
2 serrano
all 1/4" dice (I seed because I hate getting seeds in my teeth but try to leave the cross-walls to maintain heat)
1 medium carrot, shredded
saute until soft in half oil / half butter - about 1/2 c total
add 3-4 cloves garlic, minced (I like garlic and might use even more)
saute a little longer, so that the peppers are starting to color around the edges
add 1/3 c or so basil leaves, chiffonade
add a ladle or two of pasta water and stir (the starchy water will form a thin sauce and since it's salty helps season)
season to taste
add drained pasta, just al dente, and let it cook for another 5 minutes
plate, top with fresh parmesan (opt.)
serve and go, "Yummie!"

There will probably be oil left over. It will have considerable pepper and herb flavor, so save for more pasta or to put on bread.

Yup, fun fact:
A ripe red bell pepper has more vitamin C in it than an orange.

Let's see, this year I have the jalapenos, aji pineapples (grew last year, they are just so good pickled), an aji limon, an aji dulce (grew last year, it had a strange flavor that sort of grew on me), a chimayo, a purple serrano (thanks ottawapepper!), a chili de arbol, and had a fish pepper, but it got hit hard by the ants and root aphids in early summer and is just a little green stick with one leaf. The de arbol and chimayo have both been tunneled under by a roving mole and are very wilty, not sure if any peppers will ripen on them. Which makes me sad, I was really looking forward to the chimayo. We'll see though.

Good to know they are vitamin packed! I have put the jalapenos in chicken for dinner, stuffed with cream cheese and homemade garlic powder for snacks, chopped into pasta sauce, and added to a mess of crowder peas. Considering there have only been 5-6 ripe so far that's pretty versatile. Come to think of it, last year I mostly added my aji ps to fruity, acidic dishes so now I really can put them in anything! I like the sound of that pasta sauce, it has been a while since I made an oil-based sauce instead of tomato-based... Hmmm, dinner tonight?

I like the rice crispy commercial, yes. One day I went out and realized that the peppers under their shade cloth had grown so much they were intertwining and I hadn't done anything with them in a month, not even water or weed. If only the tomatoes were so low maintenance, but no, they are divas.

Just a couple weekends ago I made an oil based pasta dish.

Basically, olive oil, garlic, peppers (I think I used thai), basil, and tomatoes. It's a great light Summer dinner!

Chop/salt/drain the tomatoes. Cook pasta.

Heat the oil, garlic, peppers and cook over low-med until the garlic is lightly browned (not burnt). At the last minute, crank the heat for a few seconds to bring the oil temp up, and immediately pour over pasta, tomatoes, and basil and toss.

Top with parmasean and enjoy!

I wasn't entirely overwhelmed with the pasta sauce - it was good for a first attempt but could be better. If you have any anchovies or anchovy paste open, try adding one (or the equivalent in paste) to the oil with the peppers. I think that will give it some body. (If you haven't used anchovies this way, they dissolve in the oil and add some back-of-the-mouth flavor to the sauce. Not fishy at all.)

tsheets, I like the hot oil with the fresh tomatoes idea. I'll have to try it.

Do they do sticky threads here? We could start a recipe thread...