Its still not too late for the chillis, if you were to pick up a few plants from a garden centre and stick em in some pots of decent muck outside you might be surprised at the results! Chillis are one of our fav things from the garden, they keep great as they can be dried and flaked, or just stored in some olive oil (the oil gets all fiery) or made into a hot sauce with vinegar, sugar and whatever else is lying around. This will keep for year and is delicious.
Container gardening can be surprisingly productive and is a good (weed and digging free) way of doing lots of tasty veg. I've even grown potatoes in heavy duty plastic sacks.