Our local grocery store has their own farm, so the produce is always really fresh. There’s a “last chance” section where random but very discounted produce is bagged in bulk on a single wire shelf in the hallway to the employee break room. Sometimes they have dry goods there too; once I got a jar of smoked Spanish paprika for a dollar.
The last chance section is a good way to discover new root vegetables. We now know what kohlrabi is. We found a great pork and kohlrabi salad recipe—necessity is a good teacher.
In the summertime they have shopping bags full of tomatoes for three dollars. A full paper shopping bag. If it’s available I always get one and simmer them down into spicy red sauce.
Once Wren bought a huge bag of little cherry-red peppers. They were in good shape, firm and smooth-skinned like the hoods of tiny 2-seater BMWs. It’s a mystery why some of this stuff ends up in the hallway to the employee breakroom. She used the peppers in a cabbage slaw.
We came to find out that the peppers were Scotch Bonnets, one of the hottest peppers in the world. It’s rare you would ever need a single Scotch Bonnet in your dish, let alone a dozen of them. For the slaw, she had cut them like bell peppers. After 2 bites, we were crying and mouth breathing. After 3, I started burping uncontrollably. We chugged our margaritas for limited respite. You wouldn’t need that many Scotch Bonnets if you were running a homemade hot sauce stand.