Kiwis and manuka honey

A friend of mine has offered me an all-winter supply of home-grown organic kiwis, which is pretty darned sweet considering my usual source of kiwis is a grocery store where they are shipped in from ConAgra knows where and aren't necessarily cheap. Sure an individual kiwi is inexpensive but this is a fruit you can price per bite based on the per fruit price (2-4 bites per fruit, mostly depending on size...of your mouth, kiwis in the store are pretty much the same size) This limits my usual kiwi indulgences to those occasions when I'm at a store, have a purpose for it, and know I'll use them in the next 24 hours or so. (How is it that the kiwis I buy always go from ripe to bad in the blink of an eye?) Given that I only get to a largish grocery store every couple of weeks, this mostly means I get kiwis seldom...nowhere near often enough, that's for sure.

These kiwis, by contrast, were grown on an island in the Columbia River, right here in the pacific northwet, and when I looked at the vines yesterday there were huge clusters of gorgeous fuzzy globes (that must be the size of some sort of ball, but I can't think what — they are kiwi-sized!) hanging all over it. We guessed that there are probably about ten gallons of fruit — what? calculating fruit quantity based on how many five-gallon buckets it will fill isn't the usual method? I can even say they were island-grown, which sounds ever so exotic.

All this bounty brings a challenge: create a homemade version of Waha Wera hot sauce. I love a good challenge, and this one promises to be a fun one — especially since I've never tasted the stuff. Silly, silly me. Luckily for me I found a local source for the sauce and it's only got three ingredients (kiwis, habaneros, and manuka honey) so how tough could it be to create a reasonable take on it? And how much fun will we have trying?

My bet is that the manuka honey — which I've also never tasted — contributes a bit to the specifics of the sauce's flavor profile. Luckily, this is also available online. (Isn't everything?) I am really curious about the flavor of the honey; there's a lot of information available about the medicinal properties of manuka honey, but precious little about the flavor.

The only downside here is that I have to wait for multiple shipments of goodies to arrive before I can get started on the sauce. Given that it's the start of the Consumer Holiday season, this may take a while. sigh In the meantime, I'd love to hear from anyone who has tried either the sauce or manuka honey...make me drool with anticipation. Go on, I dare you!