[CH] Turning on the heat at New Smyrna Beach, Florida

Stober, Karen, SOHQ (kstober@att.com)
Mon, 22 Nov 1999 09:28:36 -0500 

Last Thursday on the way to Cape Canaveral, Dad and I stopped at Gentleman
Jims and Al Kusa's for a good mornin' dose of HOT.

The day was windy, overcast and cool from Hurricane Lenny.  It would rain
lightly later while we were at the Cape.  The 'skeeters and sand flies were
out in droves.  They found me real tasty.  I had the "amazing chile pepper
outfit" on.  Everybody got a real kick out of it.

Got to Jim's about 8:40AM.  Oh my gosh, look at all those habs.  Sampled
almost everything he had, and bought one of each.  Mustard, pickles, sauce
and even a big jar of his XXXX (x 4 hab mash) BBQ sauce.  When I sampled the
red part of his hot mustard, he said "not many people can do what you just
did".  Then we toured his hab and petunia patch.  He also had some other
kind of flower growing.  All are in pots so he can carry them in when it
gets cold.  They are in giant marijuana pots that he got from the police
after they were confiscated from farms.  

Dad did not sample anything.

Jim's prize plant was covered with over 150 red babies.  He gave me some red
habs and a red savina.  There must be a hundred bushes of habs alone.  He
has no lawn, unless one counts those giant hab bushes.  Jim has a smoker
capable of around 400 pounds at a time.  He is smoking fish this week and
invited us to come on back to get some.  Unfortunately, we returned to New
Jersey Saturday.  

Al is a few blocks away.  He gets most of his Savinas from a grower in St
Augustine?.  However, Hurricane Floyd destroyed the crop this year so he
could not get any.  He had only a few bottles of sauce from his own plants.
I got two X and two XX.  I also got a bag of Peter Peppers, two datils and a
red savina.  I am drying one datil, one savina and a couple of peters.  Next
year I will try to grow them.  Al also grows sweet potatoes, zucchini, giant
poinsettia, which are in full red bloom and tree sized, crotons and some
little pink edged border plant that he gave me cuttings of.  He said if I
drove there he would have given me more cuttings.  I also got a root of his
rabbit fern.  The leaf didn't survive the trip home but the root did.

His sauces are real good.  I think they are ketchup based.

Thanks Myron for Wednesday evening.  When you gonna come up north?  I came
home to find that three of my habs had turned a lovely pumpkin orange, just
in time to add them to the Thanksgiving turkey, gravy and stuffing, and the
butternut squash.  "Hot" pumpkin pie, all y'all?

Karen E. Stober