Everybody has heard of a Mistletoe but not many people know about the Huggletoe. What is a Huggletoe you ask? I’ll start at the beginning.

I have a wonderful veggie garden. One year, I had some hot peppers that I wanted to turn into pepper flakes that would be used to spice up our dinners. My sister is the master at making hot pepper flakes so I asked her for instructions. She told me the first step is to tie them up and hang them to dry out for a few months.

So, I tied up these little hot chilis and looked around for a perfect spot to hang them. I wanted them to be away from moisture and somewhere little people wouldn’t be tempted to handle them. As I was looking around, I saw the nail in the wall that we use to hang a mistletoe at Christmas time. It is in the doorway between our dining area and kitchen. It was perfect. I hung it there and made the kids hug me when we were standing under it together. We called it a Huggletoe.

This turned into a big game with the kids and I. We kept trying to trick each other into standing under it at the same time. For example, I would be standing beside the fridge (just beside the doorway) and pretend to be looking at something very interesting on the fridge. I was say “Holy cow, come and see this”. When they would walk over to see the fridge, I would jump into the door way at the same time as them and yell “Huggletoe”!

These tricks went on and on. Soon, their friends all knew about our Huggletoe and they would also play along.

After a few months, the peppers had dried out but I couldn’t bring myself to take down the Huggletoe. We had it hanging there for almost 2 years. Finally I decided it was time for our pepper flakes. Our doorway is very boring now but our jar named “Huggletoe” brings happiness at our dinners.