So my boyfriend and I went to Wahaca recently (amazing restaurant, I’ll blog about it in the next post) and got some free chilli seeds. So we planted them, all 30 of them. The thing you don’t realise with chillies is that they start off as cute little seedlings but that the end product is more of a bush than a tame house plant! And now we have about 6 of these bad boys left, having desperately found friends, relatives and strangers to accept some! I am now living in a jungle.

I think our chillies have grown to be so prosperous through careful watering (that was my boyfriend’s job) and light (the sun’s job). My job was to strategically position the plants on the ledge of our landing, on our desk and on bathroom shelves. They were quite happy as we were in the loft so it was warm and light, just what chillies need. It took about 6 months for them to grow fully and start flowering and even bearing fruit! Was very exciting until I realised that we had planted scotch bonnet chillies, which are one of the hottest varieties around. This was, and still is, disappointing. It’s nice to grow plants until they overtake your home; and it’s especially nice if they can bear fruit. But when it’s a ridiculously hot variety of fruit well, it is a bit of a shame. However, I recently found out that scotch bonnet can be used in lots of Caribbean recipes and will be trying some of them out. I’ll keep you posted!

Naimah.