Trust your instincts

Because when you don't this is what happens

I've had about 3 lbs of hot peppers in the freezer since last summer.  

My gardening buddy grows hot peppers and he was away most of last summer so I harvested them.  The past couple of years, I have made a kind of hot sauce but I wanted to do something different this year.  I found a recipe for a kind of hot pepper condiment that looked good.  So today was the day.  The peppers sat in the fridge overnight to defrost.

Sean was a trooper and cut the stems off, then put them in the blender/food processor to grind fine.

We opened the kitchen door, put on gloves and a mask and the smell was not too bad.  The paste looked pretty good too.

We put the peppers in jars, added some salt and covered with heated white vinegar.

Here is where I did not listen to myself.  There jars came out of the boiling water hot, the vinegar was hot yet when I touched the jars to screw on the lids, the jars were stone cold.  Huh?  I said why are these jars cold and Sean answered, well the peppers were half frozen.  I'm thinking to myself, ok, if I put cold jars back into the hot boiling water, they are going to break.  So what did I do? I put the cold jars into the hot water and THEY BROKE!  Well, 2 out of the 4 jars broke and let me tell you, the vapors from two broken jars of hot peppers drove Sean and I outside.

Stupid, stupid stupid. I should have taken the time to start over and heat up the pepper mixture and then repack the jars.

2 jars survived, plus a half filled one that I didn't process.  Lesson learned.