Delectable treats

As usual, I've been busy creating delicious treats.  No parts of this one came from the garden, though.  This cake was just for fun:  for the little guy's second birthday!  But he didn't eat any of it.  He's only been eating noodles, bread and the occasional waffle or bowl of cereal lately, there's no room for delicious cake in that menu. 

The main flavor of this cream cheese came from my garden though:  habanero pepper!  I took one big, fat habanero, one package of plain cream cheese and a generous amount of curry powder, chopped and mixed and voila!  A very yummy, very spicy cream cheese was born.

This version of cream cheese is for the non-spicy gourmets:  it features a selection of herbs from my garden and windowsill.  I think I threw everything in here: chives, parsley, oregano, thyme maybe even tarragon and marjoram, a small onion and some salt and pepper.  Despite its lack of spiciness, it was still delicious.

This weekend was fun-I sorted out the good chili peppers that survived the frost from the questionable ones, then had to find a way to preserve them so that we can enjoy them through the winter.  We aren't such fans of dried chilis, we like sauce, so the search for a simple sauce ensued.  Finally, I found a very simple recipe for sambal olek with just chilis and a little salt and sugar.  So I roasted 300+ grams of red chilis, then pureed them to make a very spicy sauce.  The deadly habanero sauce was a bit more complicated:  I had to saute, carmelize, etc, etc.  But the work was worth it!  I made yet another very hot, very delicious sauce.  Yesterday I even whipped up another sambal with about 400 grams of yellow chilis!  It's excellent in squash soup.

These bad boys came from the garden.  Yesterday I carved the spooky mad jack-o-lantern, and today I carved the happy one.  Today I even used the cut out pieces to make some pumpkin-carrot-curry-sambal soup.  Yum!