In puzzling over my berbere dilemma, I remembered all the red peppers that my husband had grown in our garden and picked just before the frost. After googling hot peppers, we identified ours as Anaheims, haberneros, and some incredibly potent Tabasco peppers. The Tabascos are almost hot enough to make pepper spray, according to the Scofield scale. One nibble off a Tabasco sent my 12 year old Ethiopian daughter into a coughing fit and caused my 5 year old (tricked into a nibble by an older sibling) to burst out wailing.

After soothing my poor 5 year old with a glass of milk and an invalid's pillow on the couch, I decided that peppers that hot ought to be good for something. I washed all the peppers,and dried them overnight in our food dehydrator. My Ethio girls were dubious as to whether they would work. A fair number of them had not even turned red yet, but I went ahead and dried everything we had.

Twelve hours in the dehydrator made them nice and crispy. I got out my coffee grinder, planning to turn them into powder. My wise husband insisted that the actual grinding happen outdoors -- a very good thing. Even outdoors, kids were coughing like crazy at the dust that was produced. A couple of them grabbed swim goggles so they could keep an eye on the action without their eyes watering. I stayed carefully upwind of the stuff.

The coffee grinder did an excellent job grinding the dried peppers. My 12 year old daughter tasted the resultant powder and her eyes lit up. "Mit'mita!" she said. "Just like Ethiopia!"

She added about 1/4 cup of salt, ground the concoction a little more, and pronounced it perfect authentic mit'mita. We started with about 3 cups of fresh hot peppers (about 1/2 Tabascos) and got probably a cup or so of fiery hot powder -- hotter even than berbere. My girls were well pleased.

And as for my berbere dilemma? Well, when I was digging around in the pantry for my mortar and pestle to grind up those peppers, way back in a far corner of the pantry I found a whole BIG bag full of berbere-- probably 8 cups or so. This evening we had shiro made very hot with a generous heap of berbere, and it was very good.

However, I am still very interested in any U.S. sources you might be able to recommend for berbere. Oh, and my shiro is running out too. So keep the ideas coming!