{"id":2327,"date":"2024-08-15T19:56:56","date_gmt":"2024-08-16T00:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=2327"},"modified":"2024-08-15T19:59:40","modified_gmt":"2024-08-16T00:59:40","slug":"hot-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=2327","title":{"rendered":"Hot stuff!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This year, we planted several varieties of hot peppers: habaneros; ghost peppers; super chili; Thai peppers; serrano; and Carolina reapers. We\u2019re not going to mess around with those mild ones like jalapenos. Several of the pepper plants are beginning to bear fruit.<\/p>\n

Last week, Stephanie and her son, Gregg, dined on half of a Carolina reaper. She brought the other \u201chalf\u201d of the pepper home to make chili. While she was in the kitchen making the chili, I could hear her coughing. I went to see what was wrong, and as I entered the kitchen, the power of the \u00bd of a tiny Carolina reaper took my breath away. I immediately opened the window over the sink. Next, I moved to the other room to grab a couple of leftover masks from the Pandemic. We waited a few minutes before going back into the kitchen. That is all the spice she used in the batch of chili. It turned out just right \u2013 spicy and warm, and it was a huge batch of chili.<\/p>\n

I grew up not knowing what real chili was. My mom always made a depression-era version of chili that was actually chili soup. It was heavy on the tomato juice, which stretched it far enough to feed at least half-dozen kids, if not one or two more. Even school lunch was chili soup. My belief was that chili soup was what everyone meant when they had chili. I don\u2019t remember the first time I had actual chili, but I can never go back to chili soup, even if made with V-8 juice instead of tomato juice, a wild alternative that spiced the soup enormously.<\/p>\n

In the Vail, Westside, and Arcadia areas of Iowa, better known as the AR-WE-VA School District, children are raised on having lettuce sandwiches with their chili soup at school. The recipe is simple: butter two slices of white bread, place some iceberg lettuce on one of the slices, place the other slice on top of the lettuce, and cut the sandwich diagonally. When I first heard of this, I thought it was a joke. As soon as I tried it, I couldn\u2019t believe how natural the sandwich went with the chili soup.<\/p>\n

The past week was not as hot as any August in the past. And August is not the time of the year you would usually have chili, but I wasn\u2019t done. Since a half-gallon of milk was on special for ninety-nine cents, Stephanie picked one up. We already had a full quart in the refrigerator. So, I decided to make some potato soup. I wasn\u2019t going to use mom\u2019s recipe. Mom\u2019s recipe was the depression-era soup that was nothing more than onion and celery saut\u00e9ed in butter, potatoes and milk, with some salt and pepper added to make you think you were really getting a tasty meal. No, I was going to make some real potato soup with bacon, chicken stock, and a little flour to make it thicker.<\/p>\n

I looked in several cookbooks to see if there were recipes for potato soup that I could glean ingredients from, or recreate a unique procedure. Even perusing through many church fundraising books and similar cookbooks put together by employees, neighbors, and others, to my surprise, I discovered that potato soup is not a recipe that is commonly shared. I did my best to improvise with whatever was in the cupboard and refrigerator.<\/p>\n

When my potato soup was ready to eat, I expected a gastronomic revelation. It tasted just like mom\u2019s potato soup. I\u2019ll not be sharing the recipe. Not even in a cookbook for a fundraiser. I can now understand why fundraising cookbooks lack recipes for potato soup.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

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This year, we planted several varieties of hot peppers: habaneros; ghost peppers; super chili; Thai peppers; serrano; and Carolina reapers. We\u2019re not going to mess around with those mild ones like jalapenos. Several of the pepper plants are beginning to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1270,1],"tags":[1271,1274,1272,1275,1273],"class_list":["post-2327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-uncategorized","category-uncategorized","tag-ar-we-va-school-district","tag-carolina-reaper","tag-chili","tag-lettuce-sandwich","tag-potato-soup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2327"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2329,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327\/revisions\/2329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}