Vanishing Feast – An Heirloom Solution

Heirloom as Hybrid – 1890, The Essex Hybrid

I'll be the the first to admit it, I'm a sucker for the romantic notion of heirloom varities being pure as the driven snow. When I first strated exploring heirloom varities, I assumed, (and yes you can break it apart into THOSE three words), that these were pure lines of vegetables. The blue bloods pedigrees of the vegetable kindom. 

HA! What an amateur assumption that was. Let's face it, farmers, horticulturists, seedmen, etc. have always had a vested interest in making the better producing plant. I love heirloom varities, and for the scale that I grew, they are fine. For market crops though they can be a real challenge. If you need to make money to flourish, a Watermelon Pink Beefsteak with it low yields is not a good choice. Cherokee Purples, Cherokee Chocolates and Black Cherry Tomatoes are prolific enough to turn some profit. And then there's the legendary Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter.

Fermenting Hinkelhatz

No, it's not the title of a new Christopher Guest film. It's another self-induced adventure that I get to write a story about. You know the saying you just can't make this up, well I sorta do by growing my own content. 

Hinklehatz peppers, aka Chicken Heart Peppers are a very old Pennsylvannia Dutch heirloom. (If you click the link scroll about halfway down to the description.) Or, you can keep reading this;

These hot peppers have been cultivated in this area for over 150 years! Its name perfectly describes the shape and size of these extremely hot peppers. These hot little beauties are used almost exclusively in pickled form by the PA Dutch, although they also cook and puree the peppers to make a "pepper vinegar" similar to Tabasco sauce, which is used on sauerkraut and other dishes. A recipe appears in 1848 in Die Geschickte Hausfrau. Prolific, long-season plants. Very ornamental, on compact 1-1/2 to 2 foot bushes. Very resistant to all bugs and disease. Also very cold hardy for a chile pepper.

What the above fails to mention is the name, Hinklehatz, translates into chicken heart because the peppers are very close to to size, shape and color, if it's the red variety, of a chicken heart. They rate 125,000 units on the Scoville scale. They are very serious hot peppers.

Book Update – Waiting for a Proof

I kicked around the idea of pre-selliing the book, but I have no control over the print quality. The print on demand nature of self-publishing lends itself to manuscript type of books where it's all type, or perhaps a lot of type with some illustrations through out the book.

Digital printing of photographs has gotten better over the years, and since this book does have superb photos in it, I thought it would be best to get a proof before selling it.

Another factor is the paper stock. I would think the people who run this business would have a good idea of what paper works the best for both type and photos. That's why we get proofs.

The files are uploaded. I'm waiting for them to be reviewed to see if they meet the submission guidelines required by createspace.com, the publishing studio by amazon.com. I have confidence that the final product will be good.