I will put the safety issues of that recipe for canning aside. That is your risk to choose. Is this a recipe you made up yourself? It is apparently some sort of attempt to combine fermentation with quick pack pickling? Very weird. How did you know what processing time to use? Based on the info then the over-processing came from "the jars sat for a while in the hot brine while waiting for the bwb water to heat up". Have no idea why you set the jars in "hot brine" but if your BWB water had already been heated to just below boiling (180 degrees) before you even filled the jars with the peppers and hot liquid then the jars could have gone right into the BWB and processed for 10 mins. It would have easily cut 10-15 mins. or more off the heat exposure they got. I'd suggest a review of the Pickling Guidelines at NCHFP. I linked them below. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP - Pickling Guidelines

since it's summer 6+ months out of the yr here (orlando) we have alot of meals that are no cook. we rarely use our oven (never use crock pot unless it's winter) during the summer. it's either on the grill or not cooked lol. greek marinated veggie salad...chilled tomatoes, sliced kalamata olives, crumbled feta, thinly sliced red onions combined w/ red wine vinegar, fresh thyme, greek oregano, flat parsley all well chilled. we had a new recipe yesterday...from martha stewart Living magazine aug issue that is similiar...greek salad pita wrap it was very good & we subbed low-fat sour cream for fat-free greek yogurt (we ran out)! another standby is Food Networks knock off recipe for Olive Gardens italian salad and breadsticks. a few other meals we eat are pasta salads, ceasar salads w/ grilled shrimp or chicken, chilled cooked shrimp w/ cocktail sauce, fresh chilled veggies w/ cold dips... stay cool! ~ liz

As a data point, here in S. NH, the buried tank feeding my 20 kW generator had to be 500 gal capacity, and only filled to 80%, to ensure adequate propane liquid surface area for evaporation at the rate that the generator could draw gas if fully loaded at minimum likely local ground temperature. As gas is pulled from the tank, more evaporation occurs, and this cools the tank further depending on how good the thermal conductivity is between tank and air (for exposed tanks) or tank and ground (for buried tanks). My generator at full load requires 354 kBTU/hr or 141.5 cubic ft/hr per the installation manual. Maximum load per code is 80%, so the corresponding requirement for 16 kW load is 113 cubic ft/hr. This requires a 500 gal horizontal tank when the ground temperature is down near -10F, a reasonable and probably rare minimum for the ground temperature here. For an auxiliary generator, of course, one can back off extreme electrical power usage if there were a risk of really low temperatures starving the generator of propane. Where propane supplies a range and a furnace and possibly a hot water heater and dryer, something may have to be shut off when it is cold until the tank size is increased. An example of the factors involved in analysis may be found in this paper: http://www.documentation.emersonprocess.com/groups/public/documents/bulletins/d4500147t012.pdf On the other hand, if none of this applies -- you live in San Diego and it is always warm from the propane's point of view -- then given adequate gas pipe size, the next candidate for suspicion would be the flow rate capability of your regulator. kas

Charred chilies definitely make the best chili sauce, and I make so much chili sauce myself that I never buy any, and I give a lot of what I make away. Right now I have a huge supply of Chocolate Habanero chilies in my back yard, and I will be making a huge batch of chili sauce this week-end, and so I hope it does not rain on Saturday. I add red bell peppers and garlic to the grill when I char the chilies, and this time I am going to make the chili sauce outdoors so that I won't have to wear a swim mask and snorkel in the kitchen. After I have made my Habanero sauce (which is very hot), I can then water it down when making other sauces or marinades, but at least I always have the option of making it as hot as I want. I use a lot of fresh Habanero chilies when cooking as well, which is one of the reasons the hot sauces I make last so long. I did find one brand of smoked Habanero sauce that was almost as good as what I make, but it's fairly expensive. I have cayenne chili plants as well, and I dry the chilies and store them in my kitchen for use in a lot of Italian dishes. The other ingredients I use in my hot sauce are salt and vinegar, and I use strongly flavored vinegars, such as Balsamic or red wine, usually from Italy or France. Since I only use tiny amounts of my hot sauce at a time, I can add a lot of salt to the sauce to help preserve it, and I cannot taste the salt in in. I can barely taste the vinegar either, but it does help to use a good vinegar to make the flavor more complex.