On a whim, I added a jalapeño plant to my garden. I figured I couldn’t go wrong since I love spicy foods. This past week, I had 4 gorgeous jalapeños ready to be picked.

I mean, my crappy phone pics taken with range hood lighting just don’t do the deep, lustrous green color of these peppers justice.

The problem with just having one plant is that I’ll never get enough to do anything significant with. I doubt I’m going to make poppers with just 1 or 2 or 4 jalapeños. And, that’ll never be enough to can.

That’s why this year I’m doing this:

I’m recording how much I’m harvesting this year. It should give me a good idea of how many plants I need if I want to can the produce.

I digress, though, back to the jalapeños. I did find this recipe from Simply Scratch for refrigerator jalapeño slice pickles. It looked easy enough and it didn’t make a gallon of pickling juice, so I was in.

Let me tell you how much I love garlic. I love the smell of fresh garlic. Maybe next year my garden will be all jalapeños and garlic. I was concerned about the amount of sugar, though. I didn’t want these to be sweet. But, in the end there’s just a little hint of sweetness that is perfect!

My 4 peppers didn’t even fill a half pint jar! It may or may not be because I taste-tested a couple of rings while they were soaking in the warm juice. These are so good. I am so happy with how they turned out! They’ll be perfect for topping pizzas, adding to tacos, or shoot, just for snacking.

I’ve never done refrigerator pickles of any sorts, but I’m adding this recipe to my repertoire for when I don’t have too much of anything to do a big batch of canning. I love growing pickling cucumbers and I already have visions of doing spicy pickle slices. Mmmmmm!