When it’s 99 degrees Fahrenheit outside in Houston, Texas, you might find me in the kitchen, smiling next to a hot stove. Every few months, my husband Bob and I mix up a batch of hot sauce for friends, family and a few special clients. We don’t sell it, though we are starting to look at renting commercial kitchen space–the first step in turning the hobby into a business. 

As we prep peppers and turn them into bottled flavor and heat, we muse about some of the life lessons that can be found in the process.

1. Plan ahead, but be adaptable to change. We grow a few of our own ingredients, which takes advance planning. We also buy from a local farmers’ market and grocery stores. We can’t always count on a good yield or the same types of peppers being in season. So, we adapt the recipe to accommodate what’s available. In a recent batch, for example, we used some of our perfectly ripe home-grown Anna and Dorsett Golden apples instead of a mild pepper. Sweet…then the heat kicks in.

Interesting things can happen when you are open to a change of plans.

2. Sharpen your tools. Sharp knives are important for slicing and dicing the peppers, onions and garlic that go into our sauce. So is a good blender with powerful blades. When we received a heavy-duty blender as a Christmas gift a few years ago, it made a huge difference. The results were a smoother blend in a lot less time.

When you try out a new skill or sharpen an old one, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

3. The process can be as rewarding as the goal. There is a sense of accomplishment when we see those little bottles lined up in neat rows on the kitchen counter. But we treasure those hours working side by side, too. We get into a state of flow with Texas blues playing in the background while we do the ordinary chores of prepping, measuring, mixing, simmering and pouring. There’s great anticipation and excitement after the first blending step, when we sample a few dots of the thick sauce on a cracker.

Life isn’t just about the major accomplishments. It’s also about the small steps you celebrate along the way.

4. Don’t settle for off-the-shelf. I had never been especially fond of mass-produced, store-bought hot sauces. Too much heat and not enough flavor. In 2005, I found a couple of recipes online and we began experimenting. That developed into a blend of hot and mild peppers and other ingredients that add flavor to the heat.

We miss out on life’s richness when we settle for someone else’s idea of what we should have, without exploring other options.

5. Time is the secret ingredient. We invest a whole afternoon every time we make hot sauce. We don’t get any financial benefits from it (yet). To us, the gift of time spent together is more valuable than anything we might buy and wrap in shiny paper. The people who get a bottle of hot sauce from us may not know how much time went into it, but it does surprise them that we would find time to make it.

Share time with someone special. Don’t count the minutes or the cost.