Recipes and Rituals for Community Care

Hot History: Exploring Chile Peppers and Making Fermented Hot Sauce

Join us for a free workshop on chile peppers and how they spread around the globe. You’ll open with trivia on their history, how to grow them, and the Scoville heat scale.

Next, we’ll pass around a fermented batch. We’ll talk about how this ancient preservation method builds flavor and nutrition. Then, together in the kitchen, we’ll blend two hot sauces and taste test them with bread and snacks.

This event is part of Recipes & Rituals for Community Care. Explore the role of plants in personal and communal well-being with guest herbalists, healing artists, and wellness practitioners.

FACILITATOR

Anjana is a community gardener and chef raised in Ohio with roots in south India now based in New York. Guided by her family, she grows, cooks with, and shares plants to preserve culture, build connection, and nourish her community. She likes to use science and history to explore the stories of plants and invite a deeper conversation around your roots: your relationship with the earth, the people around you, and self.

ACCESSIBILITY

The kitchen/classroom is wheelchair accessible; with advance notice we can add a mat path across the greenhouse’s pebbled ground (garden entrance has a small raised threshold; garden paths are grass).
Tables adjust height; backless benches/stools available.
Kitchen is shared—we avoid peanuts but can’t guarantee a nut-free space; water provided in refillable pitchers.
First aid on-site; nearest AED is one building away.
Nearest restrooms are ~1 min walk; a gender-neutral restroom is available by key from staff.
Not a scent-free space (essential oils used in class), though we ventilate and welcome masking/distancing.
Other access needs? Contact programs@thehort.org.
All Greenhouse Education Center events happen rain or shine.