Cowboy Candy by Sable Hunter

 

Hello Everyone! The holidays are almost upon us. I hope you are safe, well, and happy. I also hope you get everything you want for Christmas. As for me, I’m doing well. I have two sweet little girls staying with me most of the time now, which really cuts down on the time I have to write. But that’s okay, this time with Emma and Cassie is precious to me. Would you like to see their pictures? My angels.

Anyway, as I can find the time I’m making goodies. Chocolate chip cookies, Libby’s Brownies, Hot Spice Crackers, Martha Washington candy – and a bunch of other stuff. One other thing is always necessary and that’s COWBOY CANDY. Not what you might presume, but so good and highly addictive. Considering this is a cowboy blog, I thought I’d share the recipe.

Another name for this delectable concoction is candied jalapenos. Yes, candied hot peppers. They are hell yeah! good, I promise. But fiery! So, be brave.

Here we go:

3 pounds jalapenos

2 cups apple cider vinegar

6 cups granulated sugar

½ teaspoon turmeric

½ teaspoon celery seed

3 teaspoon granulated garlic

1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper – or less if you can’t take the heat.

First, find some gloves and put them on – you’re about to be handling fire. Take 3 pounds fresh firm jalapenos – wash them, cut off and discard the stems, then slice the peppers in circles – 1/8 to ¼ inches thick. Keep as many seeds as you want, the more seeds the hotter the finished product. Now set these little jewels aside.

Next, bring the vinegar, sugar, the turmeric, celery seed, garlic, and cayenne to a boil in a large pot. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Raise the heat to a boil again and add the jalapeno slices, return to a rolling boil, then reduce the heat once more and simmer for EXACTLY 4 minutes. Now, to put them in jars… It’s best to use a slotted spoon to pick up the peppers and transfer them into clean, sterile canning jars. Leave a ¼ inch of head space at the upper rim of the jar. Turn heat back up under the pot containing the syrup and bring into a boil one last time. Boil hard for 6 minutes.

Turn off the heat then ladle the boiling syrup into the jars to cover the jalapeno slices. Insert the blade of a case or butter knife carefully into the jars on each side to get rid of any trapped pockets of air. Try to keep the level of syrup to a ¼ inch from the top. Wipe the rims of the jars with a clean paper towel that has been dampened in vinegar. Then put on new two-piece canning lids and tighten to finger tight.

If you have leftover syrup, don’t throw it away, it can just it in a pint jar – it’s amazing on grilled meat or to top a salad.

Put the jars into a canner or a big stock pot, cover with water higher than the jars by 2 inches. Bring the water to a rolling boil and boil for 10 minutes for half pints and 15 minutes for pints. This is called water bath canning. Once the time is up, use canning tongs to move these very hot jars to a cooling rack. If you don’t have any canning tongs, wait until the water cools, and use a couple of dishtowels to grab onto them. Be careful the glass jars are super-hot if you don’t let them cool properly. Let them rest for 24 hours, then wipe them off with a washcloth and label them with a cute label if you have one. If you can wait, allow the cowboy candy to sit for two weeks to a month – but I usually can’t wait and have been known to indulge after a couple of days. They do improve with time, however.

If you choose to make these, I’m sure you will love them – if you like spicy things. I can eat a pile of them with a helping of peas and they are great on sandwiches or just as a snack with cheese and crackers. Personally, I can vouch that cowboys love these – I’ve made jars for quite a few of those noble, manly rascals.

Here is a photo of my favorite way to eat them. 

Those little knees on the table belong to Miss Em. Right after I took this picture, she grabbed the cheese. I managed to remove the peppers before she popped it into her mouth, but she let out a squeal of surprise at one remaining drop of sweet, hot pepper juice that remained on the cheese – but she ate it anyway. That’s my girl.

Finally, I wish you the very best Christmas. I hope Santa brings you everything you ask for.

So, goodbye until next time and be careful during the holidays.

Love, Sable Hunter.


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Love in Days Gone By

I love writing historical romance, and one of the most fascinating and enjoyable aspects of that career is the research involved to bring characters to life. It's quite an understatement, of course, to say that life in the past was much different from today, yet in many ways, human nature hasn't changed all that much. Women then, as now, have wanted love and happiness, and have appreciated the values of home and family.

In The Wrong Woman, I wrote the following. In this little snippet from the story, Abigail and a friend begin by discussing a man...and end up contemplating what it means to be a woman:

~ ~ ~

“Let’s put our heads together, shall we? Maybe we can figure out why Will is acting so peculiar.”

Abigail pulled up a chair. “He’s a man, that’s why.”

“Men are always joking about their inability to understand women, but it works both ways, don’t you think?” asked Julia. “I mean, men are probably much more of a puzzlement than any woman could ever be. Our wants are so simple, really. We want to be loved and respected. We want to make a good marriage, raise a family of well-mannered children, and grow comfortably old with the man we love. What’s so difficult to understand in that?” The question was rhetorical. It required no response.

What an accurate observation, thought Abigail as she sipped her tea. In a few simple, straight-forward sentences, Julia had neatly summed up the precise nature of being a woman.

Love and marriage.

Home and family.

~ ~ ~

Fortunately, women had many helpful resources to which they could turn for practical advice and down-to-earth instructions on how to achieve those cherished goals.  One popular reference was Married Love, also known as Love in Marriage, written by Dr. Maria Carmichael Stopes. 

I've browsed around a bit and have come up with some very interesting bits of advice from Dr. Stopes.

Marriage and Toiletry

Now, it may enchant a man once -- perhaps even twice -- or at long intervals -- to watch his goddess screw her hair up into a tight and unbecoming knot and soap her ears. But it is inherently too unlovely a proceeding to retain indefinite enchantment.

To see a beautiful woman floating in the deep, clear water of her bath -- that may enchant for ever, for it is so lovely, but the unbeautiful trivialities essential to the daily toilet tend only to blur the picture and to dull the interest and attention that should be bestowed on the body of the loved one.

Pet Him

Men are, at heart, eternally children, and such tender petting as comforts children warms and sweetens a grown man's life. The "good night" should be a time of delightful forgetting of the outward scars of the years, and a warm, tender, perhaps playful exchange of confidence.

Be Always Escaping

Man is still essentially the hunter, the one who experiences the desires and thrills of the chase, and dreams ever of coming unawares upon Diana in the woodlands. I think that, in the interests of husbands, an important piece of advice to wives is: Be always escaping.

Ensure that you allow your husband to come upon you only when there is delight in the meeting. 

Whenever the finances allow, the husband and wife should have separate bedrooms, failing that, they should have a curtain which can at will be drawn so as to divide the room they share.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Yes, life was different indeed in days gone by. Love, too, was different in some respects, yet very much the same in others. I believe we can learn from the past, and I hope to create a home for my family that reflects many of the traditional, "old-fashioned" values which were once taught as part of what it meant to be a woman.

Finding little gems of wisdom through my research always brings a smile to my heart, and I'll leave you now with this sage advice for  loving wives and their husbands:

Never speak loudly to one another, unless the house is on fire.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Until next month...may your lives be blessed with love!

Christina