Sunday, August 15, 2010

Summery peppers

The 5-color peppers are living up to their name in August. Nice and summery!

Pesto change-o

We tried making almond pesto last week. Different flavor from pine nuts, pretty tasty.

We hardly had any cheese and it still came out great. I freeze the pesto in ice cube trays then put the blocks into containers in the fridge. Makes it easy to take out a little at a time; add some to tomato soup to give it zing.

Feeling inadequate?

These Yamoto cucumbers won't help:


Don't know if I will grow them again. Grow very fast, get out of control, aren't too crispy. Will intimidate your friends and neighbors.

Corn??

Could I possibly get a few popcorn cobs this summer? Talk about a haphazard attempt (planted seeds between tomatoes and beans right before I left for a month)

Lots o tomatoes

I've been slowly working on processing tomatoes. I made some tomato soup, almost by accident. Been drying cherry tomatoes and made a batch of salsa to store in the freezer. The tomato plants are starting to look scraggly, but this has been a really great tomato year so I'm pretty happy.

Can't even tell ya how many buckets of tomatoes I've hauled in this summer.

Roasting tomatoes for soup:


Dried tomatoes and soup in freezer:

Even more (with a few pickling cukes):

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Update on peppers and eggplants

These were also taken before we left for the trip, in the third week of July:
The Jalapenos are going crazy:


And... hoooray! I actually got an eggplant:


The heirloom Peter Peppers are finally starting to make peppers:

They will turn red and look like little weiners, hence their name.

Harvest pictures

These were taken in the 2nd and 3rd weeks of July. I started getting ripe tomatoes almost a month earlier than last year.
First batch of big ripe tomatoes:


Some tomatoes, asparagus beans, and the first Yamoto cucumber - these guys are almost 2 feet long but only an inch across:

Pizza!

Some homemade pizza using pesto and tomatoes from the garden: