Some like it hot....

Monday and Tuesday was spent at the NNBA convention at the beautiful Skamania Lodge.  We featured our new Indoor Edibles line.

The Edibles line includes 3 herb "palates" to choose from.  Bella Cucina is focused on mediterranean cooking - and would be a great assortment to have for a pre-Thanksgiving or Holiday cooking area at a retail store.  Fresh rosemary, oregano, sage and basil would help any chef add a special touch to their meal.  Pad Thai is focused on asian cuisine. It includes a siam/thai basil, garlic chives, cilantro and a hot pepper.  Fresca Y Picante is our hispanic cuisine line.  It has cilantro, oregano, mint and a hot pepper as well.

But the real hit of the show was the "Pick Me Peppers".  This group has a snack bell pepper all the way through "Hot Carrot".  We had a pepper eating contest at the show - and a few folks dived right in.  The order we had was:

• Hot Tomato: this is a mild pepper (not as hot as a jalapeno)
• Hot Banana:  Banana peppers can range from mild when they are green to hot if you let them ripen to red, about the same heat as a jalapeno.
• Hot Salsa: this is about like a jalapeno, but with a nice spicy kick to it.
• Golden Cayenne: this is definitely hot.
• Hot Carrot: while not a Ghost pepper - our contestants were definitely feeling the heat with this one - eyes started to water, throats were burning.

Now I am not a pepper eater - but I could eat the first three, and Golden Cayenne without the seeds.  I thought that was pretty good.  Regina is more daring and she tasted the Hot Carrot. (By the way, the Hot Carrot looks exactly like a little carrot, and same with the Tomato - so keep an eye on the little ones.)

We had lots of comments about care for these plants.  They are meant to be indoors (although you could plant any of them outside come next spring).  They would prefer a bright window.  Regina did test out a pepper in our office - which gets little to no light all weekend.  In over a week, the pepper did not drop any leaves, and a pepper even ripened up.  Trust me, if it can live in our offices it will live for your customers!