Pepperberry bonanza

Today a friend popped over and picked a huge bucket load of Tasmanian native pepperberries. I had already picked what I wanted. I dried them spread out on baking trays on top of a cupboard and they're now in jars ready to use in place of regular black peppercorns for added flavour, colour and heat. It turns out that this year's batch are quite spicy!

On a visit to Kingston-based Essential Oils of Tasmania last year, I learned that pepperberry bushes only flower and produce fruit every three years or so, which would explain why we had very few last year and the year before that. This year has seen a bumper crop. Perhaps I'd better pick some more...