Homemade Orange Chile Pepper

The brother's daddy and uncle both had their birthdays last month, so we needed to stock up on gifts. It needed to be homemade (by the boys, of course), use mostly things we had around and be fairly quick to make, since the weeks before the birthdays were insane work wise. Tall order?

Nah.

Both daddy and his brother love to grill, so we made Orange Chile Pepper for meat hot off the grill. I had some oranges left over, so I used a vegetable peeler to get the skin off and a knife to scrape the remaining white pith off the back. Then I finely minced the peel and left it on a plate on the counter for a day or two. Voila, dried orange peel!

Then big brother and I took a trip to Ikea one Saturday afternoon and (among a select few other items, naturally) bought two of their spice mills.

While daddy was at going for a run, the boys took to their project. We got our dried orange peel, some coarse sea salt, black pepper and whole dried red chiles.

We started with some salt, then added the orange peel. We didn't really use a recipe, the boys and I pretty much eyeballed it.

 Add some black peppercorns and then some hot chiles.

Screwing the top back on the mills, giving it a few shakes and adding a tag - done!

Actually, that was too easy. Even for us. Luckily we had picked up some simple gray oven mitts at Ikea. We grabbed some fabric pens we had, and the boys drew a design, each one on one side of the mitt, so both mitts have big and little brother's artwork on them. It's a cat standing at a grill, btw.What, your cats don't usually grill your dinner? Ha.

Of course we also had to come up with the matching card. A quick Pinterest search later, we made these BBQ cards where you can actually open the top of the grill. That's fish on the grill. Guess the cat went to get himself another beer then...

So, now I have some time before I need to come up with a father's day craft...

What kid-made gifts have you done recently?

Swenja