Making Hot Pepper Jelly

When I got back home this afternoon, I picked a bunch of Hot Peppers from the garden and decided to try my hand at making Hot Pepper Jelly.

Today's harvest from my garden!

 I used the recipe for Easy Jalapeno Jelly out of a book called: 

Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving: 400 delicious and creative recipes for today

 Things I learned while in my 1st ever attempt to make Hot Pepper Jelly:

It takes A LOT of peppers to equal 12 oz after you remove seeds and veins!

When handling hot peppers, it is best to use rubber gloves in order to prevent the Capsaicin in the peppers from burning your skin.

 THIS INCLUDES CLEANUP, not just while you are cutting, seeding & de-veining the peppers.

When the instructions call for a "deep, stainless steel saucepan", what they mean is a "HUGE pasta pot".

 Apparently, upon boiling, the raging lava more than doubles in volume...

 ...and is likely to pour out of the saucepan all over your stove top with little to no warning.

Food coloring is NOT required for hot pepper jelly, despite what the recipe calls for. Mine turned out a brilliant, fiery red/orange- perhaps a homage to the hot stuff within!

• Unlike boiling water, when jelly splashes on you while boiling, it does not just drip off. Instead, it sticks to your skin like napalm and begins eating through the 1st couple layers of skin.
  
  No matter how independent you believe yourself to be, this is NOT a 2 handed task. It really helped to have Hubby there to help out.
• 
  If you begin this task with any sinus congestion, it will be gone before the task is complete.

As I'm typing this, the can lids are popping one-by-one as they cool. This lets me know that there is a good seal on them. YAY! I did it correctly! Now comes the hardest part: waiting for them to cool and set before I can taste it!