Over the last week we have been watching John Muir on you tube talking about keeping a nature journal. Its quite long so we watched a little section each day as I wanted the boys to learn from someone who is passionate about what they do.
When we had finished watching I asked them if there was anything they would like to study and they decided to observe our chilli plant that has been growing in the green house but had been brought inside to harvest.
The chillies were grown from some seeds we had saved from chillies we had bought last year from the supermarket.
We found that Capsaicinoids are the chemical which give rise to the heat of chillies. The "hotness" of a chilli is measured by the scoville scale which was originally a subjective measurement but is now measured scientifically by using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to see how much capsaicinoid is present. It is named after its developer Wilbur Scoville.
The hottest chillies - the Haberno and Scotch Bonnet have pungencies of 300 000+ with the hottest recorded one being 577 000 compared to pure capsaicin being 16 000 000.
I was so pleased with their attitude to completing a page in their nature journals and although we didn't all manage to sit down together to complete them (which is my dream - maybe one day!) I was very impressed with their pages and they had incorporated some of the ideas given in the video -
- asking questions,
- not worrying about the quality of your sketches,
- adding details of scale,
- zooming in on small parts of what you were studying.
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| Lukes' nature journal |
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| Bens' nature journal |
Our chillies have been harvested this week and I have tried various recipes:
- lazy chillies (chopped and preserved in vinegar and kept in the fridge)
- hot pepper jelly (chilli and bell peppers in a jelly)
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