Mine didn start to bear anything till late fall here pulse, so keep the faith, it might still do something!

After I posted yesterdee, when I went in my spare room to check on my chiles, lo and behold 3 of my very small ghost chiles have turned orange, and a couple more look like they will too .... woohoo

My cayennes did the best this year, bet I got at least 100 off the 5 or so plants I had and some were like 4"/100mm long with great taste and a nice bite. My jalapenos amd serranos weren't nearly as prolific and bore only like 1-1/2"/37mm long peppers but those lil suckers def had some KICK

For chili I usually just start off with a base of some Wick Fowlers 3 Alarm Chili mix, 4 or 5lbs. of some good ground round steak (though venison is really the best!) and a lb or more of ground chili meat, several hands full of various peppers (shredded) and then add all kindsa crazy stuff to it. I like to add in whole kernel corn, sometimes a can of refried beans to help thicken it up a bit or even some English Peas for a bit of variety and I always cook it up then let it simmer overnight to really let the peppers heat soak into all the goodies really well!

BTW, right there with ya on the canned peppers, fresh are the only way I eat 'em. Years ago I did find one brand of canned peppers called Clemente Jacques that actually had great taste without the typical vinagary taste canned peppers have and had a nice bite, but I haddn seen 'em in a while.

Yeah fossil, that place had some wicked hot mustard! That stuff always seems to hit me harder, or least in a very different way than do even really HOT peppers. I really did love dippin my fresh jalapenos in it though, that was awesome