A Passion for Peppers!

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Jul 19, 2000

I have done several articles featuring Chile-head friends and I realized that I have never done one about ME! I decided to tell you something about myself and my addiction to chile peppers and hot stuff and include some of my favorite hot and spicy recipes for this article.

I have lived in northeast Mississippi all my life but my father was from El Paso and we used to go there every year to visit his relatives when I was young. We always ate "Mexican food" when we went there and I developed quite a taste for it although it was not "hot". Mother got recipes from my aunt who was from NM originally and cooked Mexican/NM food at home. After I got married I cooked Mexican-style dishes all the time and made mine hotter than Mother did. Over the years I began to cook other cuisines such as Cajun and Chinese.

I started gardening about 1990 when we moved to the country and collected chile pepper seeds from various sources, including seed swaps with gardeners from around the country. I had never been able to get long green chiles here and finally I was able to grow my own, along with poblanos, serranos, habaneros, pequins, and seveal others.

Mexican cuisine was and still is my favorite although with Internet access I can now cook virtually any cuisine that I can find ingredients for in the culinary boondocks of Mississippi. The availability of ethnic ingredients has really become a lot better in the past 3 years, but some items are still impossible to find without traveling to a large city or ordering them over the Internet.

In 1996 I was encouraged and helped by friends I met online to create a web page to share my extensive collection of recipes that I had painstakingly typed into my word processor. I called it Flavors of the South. It has blossomed and expanded over the years to include Mexican (which includes Tex-Mex, New Mexican, and Southwestern Recipes), Hot and Spicy, Cajun, Barbecue, Chinese, Crockpot, Holiday, Desserts, and other categories, as well as Southern cuisine. Stop by Flavors for a visit!

Here are some of my favorite recipes!

HOME-STYLE INNER BEAUTY HOT SAUCE