Here is a garland of fresh chili peppers ready for drying, hung on the front of our house in imitation of the method used for making Piment d’Espelette. Fresh hot peppers are not that easy to find in a Orthez, as the French taste in spicy food runs to the mild side. So we decided to grow our own jalapeno and habanero chilies – these are the jalapenos. We tasted a slice of the first of each kind that we picked and they didn’t seem super hot. So I happily chopped up a whole one of each to add to a salsa. Wow, they were a lot hotter than they seemed! Anyway, we are now picking plenty for use fresh and some left to dry for later.