Chili pepper // vegetable (botanically a fruit)

🌱🌶️🤔 When you think of fruit, apples, peaches, and pears come to mind. But how about chili peppers? Chili peppers like tomatoes, technically speaking, are classified as berry fruit, not vegetables. These versatile, gorgeous tinny berries can be used in various ways and add spiciness, warmth, color, and flavor to enhance your plant-based culinary creations. And what can these tiny peppers offer?

👩‍🍳💪 Chili peppers are usually red or green colored and may vary in size, shape, flavor, color, and hotness. They add spiciness, warmth, color, and flavor to your meals providing many health benefits. Experiment with the different types of chilis to find the ones you enjoy eating and cooking with.  

👵💚 Grandma Sita’s tips:
*Keep fresh chili peppers in a ball jar or glass container tucked into a pantry or cupboard for optimal storage.
*You can easily freeze chili peppers whole, sliced, or chopped to preserve them for longer.
*Another way to preserve chili peppers is the drying method. Simply place whole chilies on a baking tray and heat in your oven at the lowest temperature until dry.

🔥The real source of the heat is from the placenta, or pith, the soft, white membrane that lines the inside of the chili pepper just below the stem but a common hack is cutting the seeds out of chili peppers will remove the spiciness. Be careful, always wear gloves when cutting a hot chili pepper!!!

📗 Chili peppers are native to Central America and cultivated in warm climates around the world. In most areas, chilies grow from spring to autumn. In cold climates, grow chili as a summer to early autumn crop with plenty of shelter from cold winds. In the tropics, chilies grow year-round but are best sown from autumn to spring. 

😋 There are more than 400 different types of edible berries worldwide from which you can choose locally. Get the most out of seasonal berries by adding them to yummy plant-based snacks or meals.

🌎 How do you spice up your life? Adding chili peppers to your plant-based meals there are different varieties available worldwide, allowing you to choose locally. Eating local and seasonal fruits and vegetables helps to reduce food waste, saves resources, improves food quality and healthy habits, and boosts the local economy.