Grocery store selections are usually limited. Specialty stores usually aren't that much better. Growing your own is overall the best route to go.

Unless your entire family is into daily hot foods in quantity, pots on an apartment balcony can grow a year's supply and more. A little web searching will result in many suppliers of seeds. 15 seeds for three dollars is the usual price but that is twenty cents per seed and sprouting two per year is a seven year supply.

Add to that the cost of potting soil, container and a fertilizer like Miracle Grow will produce many times more than the cost of the peppers in a store if you can find them. Cost of decorative pot in which to put the cheap plastic container excluded of course. Do not forget that the container must be drained of water; easiest if it has holes.

Drying them is as easy as buying any food drier you can find and following directions. I have had the greatest success in drying foods with the simplest screens in a gas oven. I have not tried the $100 and up systems and would not consider them if a gas oven is available.

Whichever you choose, go through the recipe book that will come with it. Do not consider this a cost solely to making dried chillies. Price dried fruit compared to fresh fruit next time you are at the grocery.

And my favorite use is beef jerky. Take one eye round, slice thin, marinate in any marinade including some of these great chillies, dry and compare to over one dollar an ounce in the stores.

Remember to store them in the refrigerator in their own zip-lock bags. That may seem like a lot of space but unless you are preserving them for their looks as decoration crush them first. The crushed produce of a single plant can fit in a small freezer container and kept there and mentioned in your will without significant loss of flavor. Can you think of a better way to be remembered?