Hello Hive

Happy Sunday to all, especially my hardworking farmers and homesteaders. Having had a brief Sunday service today, we just got back from church and have headed straight to the kitchen to check out what we can prepare for lunch.

Most of the foods we have been eating this far have been harvested from our farms, so I hardly know how much food items cost in the market unless my neighbors begin to complain about the high cost of things. We still have a little of our harvested rice left, some corn grains, and this harvested pepper.

Farming doesn't just end with harvesting. Preservation of the harvested crops is equally important as growing the crops themselves. When we are able to properly preserve some crops, it makes it easy and accessible for use during the dry seasons.

A lot of people are often of the opinion that they cannot eat dry pepper because it often loses its nutrients, but such is not the case here.

You can preserve your grains/fruits/pepper in a way that it still maintains its nutrients just like it was when it was fresh; it all depends on the methods of preservation you choose to use.

In order to preserve pepper and still keep its nutrients intact, here is one effective method I have used.

After harvesting the pepper, wash and clean it to keep away dirt and sand.

Then use a knife or, preferably, scissors to cut them up like I did here.

After that I dried it in the sun consistently for a number of days. This drying method keeps its hotness intact and all the other nutrients; only the moisture content gets dried from the 🌶️ 🌶️ 🫑 🌶️.

That's the reason you can see that I now have as much dry pepper with its nutrients and red color intact.

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This is what I have been using to cook for the past 2 weeks ever since peppers got expensive at the market. I just pick and soak it in water before blending it smooth with other tomatoes and soup ingredients.

Also keeping it in well cleaned airtight and water proof nylon bag is also important such that the pepper doesn't acquire moisture and gets rust in storage.

The other method people use to preserve this pepper doesn't preserve its nutrients or hotness. They prefer to boil the freshly harvested pepper in water first before drying it. They believe that boiling the pepper first makes it easy for moisture content to dry off from the pepper on time.

Boiling or heating the pepper under the oven can cause it to lose its nutrients, and those ones aren't as red as these ones in color. This is the method used in olden times, and having gotten a better way, I often teach people how effective and better an option the first method is. Hopefully more farmers will learn about this very effective method of drying peppers.