Those little 15.5 jars go fast...I think the 62oz were a lot more than 4x the peppers. I think these little jars are lying. I don't know how they're getting away with it, but I think they are. The big old jars had seemingly endless scoops of peppers.

I just ordered some calcium chloride, time to get this show on the road. Looks like I can use it for pickled sweet peppers too. Uses a 1/4 tsp per quart. I've been checking labels at the grocery store and a lot of picked stuff has it in there for crispness. But I can't find any calcium chloride to purchase anywhere except online. It does sound as if it sold at home brewery suppliers...but I've never heard of a place like that around here.

$7 something gets me 8oz of kosher stuff! which is enough to crisp the next 8oz x ~30g/oz x 4 =~960 quarts of pickled whatevers. If I vac seal it so it doesn't harden up, should be plenty for the rest of my time on earth...just wish I knew about it when I started canning.

That batch I made is still crispy.

You can find (at least in winter) CaCl2 locally in 25 or 50 lb bags, but it's not food grade! However, the food grade won't break your budget, as it does last a long time, as you figured out.

I pickled jalapeno slices last year for the first time; they were incredible! Still enjoying!

Our favorite way to have jalapenos is to do a 50/50 mix of low fat cream cheese with goat cheese, add in some garlic powder, fill the halved, deseeded, deribbed jalapenos. Top with just a small amount of crumbled, cooked bacon (some wrap in bacon but then all you taste is bacon and I am - gasp - not a huge bacon fan) bake at 350 until peppers are soft and the filling is nicely browned. Drizzle with a bit of habanero jelly that has been melted in the microwave.

Trying jalapeno pickled eggs for the first time this year.

I got around to this a few days back. I had picked the last of the peppers a couple weeks back before the frost/freezes started in earnest. Two canner loads of sliced jalapenos in pints. A couple quarts, unprocessed, for the fridge. And a few half pints of habs. I put some calcium chloride in all of them. One of the pints of jalapenos did not seal, so after two days in the fridge we opened it to use for quesadillas. Hot and crisp, very nice.