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If Texas A&M has done anything worthwhile, it's been developing peppers. This beautiful Serrano, and it is a Serrano pepper, is called Hidalgo, H-i-d-a-l-g-o, it's a beautiful thing, much larger than a normal Serrano and very smooth and wonderful. About 75% of this pot is a regular Serrano, but to most people, that is about 60% more than they really need. It's a hot pepper. For those of you that like Serranos don't avoid getting the Hidalgo, because it's a pistol.

One of the new releases that just came on the market in the last year or so that you may not have tried, is this little beauty right here. It looks like a jalapeno. I think it is one of the most versatile peppers that Texas A&M has ever released. It looks like a jalapeno, but it's not, it's sweet. When it first sets on the vine, it's yellow as you see here. So you've got a sweet yellow pepper just like a sweet pepper. If you leave it on a little longer, it will turn orange like this one right here. If you leave it on even longer than that, it will turn red, just like this. So of course it is edible in all 3 colors. So now you've got a pepper that you can have in all 3 colors and make your food a lot prettier.

Suppose you want a hot pepper. Suppose you want to make your own jalapeno and you want to make it just as hot as you want. All you have to do is choose some of these peppers, and put 1 or 2 hot ones per jar, depending on hot you want to make it, and the heat from the regular jalapenos will make these just as hot.

You can even color-code them if you want. Like if you want the yellow ones to be extremely mild, just put about one jalapeno per quart jar. If you want to be a little hotter, use this orange one and make it with about 2 jalapenos per jar. If you want it to make it a scorcher, put a Serrano and put about 3 hot jalapenos per jar. You can make this thing just as hot as you want to.

Another interesting thing is that this pepper is actually called Rio Grande Gold; it's the A&M name for it. Rio Grande Gold because it was developed in the Rio Grande. But a lot of people tell me it should be called Belcher. That's right, Belcher. Now that doesn't sound like a really pretty name, but a lot of people that eat regular bell peppers, tell me that it kind of upsets their stomach a little bit after a few hours and then they belch a lot. But not this one, it is a truly belchless pepper.

So you certainly want to try some of these in your garden, they are very prolific producers, and the only problem you are going to have with them is figuring out what in the world to do with them. Rio Grande Gold, that's the name of it.