Cranberry Habanero Home-made Jelly Hell

A lot of people know how to make home-made jelly. But we've never really felt motivated to try it ourselves until we acquired a load of Habanero chilies from Keith's grandma's garden and came across a recipe that sounded pretty dang delicious: Cranberry Habanero Jelly. It seemed like a great way to make use of an excess of chillies. Chopping the chillies required that we wear gloves, but even through the gloves, our fingers burned. Despite my ghastly description of the process, you might wonder why we look happy in these photos. The pain was so fierce that complaining was utterly useless. And in such a hopeless state of pain, we simply got the giggles. The more it burned us, the funnier it was. I guess that was our coping mechanism for the pain.

And no matter how often we washed our hands, for several hours later, we would instantly regret the accidental touch to the eyes or face - which was also funny to us. We knew it was bad when areas of our face and fingers simply went numb, as if sections of our skin simply gave up the ghost to the relentless Habanero.

When we cooked down the chillies with the cranberries, the air throughout the house burned with toxic lung-blistering fumes.

We had to open all windows, turn on all vents and fans, and choke through the process, taking turns at the oven to "stir constantly." It was somewhat tortuous, but the result was fantastic. I think the spicy-sweet jelly takes a peanut-butter sandwich to a whole new level of wonderful. If any brave soul out there wants the recipe, hit me up!