Harvest Monday - September 20, 2010

This was the week for preserving peppers and eggplants. There weren't large amounts of peppers to harvest but there was variety.

Left to Right Topepo Rosso,
Esplette, and PI593480 (Morocco)

The Topepo Rosso peppers are moderately spicy and I used them to make a pepper paste to freeze for later use. The Morocco peppers were made into a sweet pepper paste which is also in the freezer. The Esplette peppers are in the dehydrator even now.

Left to Right: De La Vera, Guyana,
Aji Pineapple (small yellow),
Manzano Yellow (round yellow),
and Drew's Chorizero

De La Vera and Chorizero peppers are in the dehydrator and the rest of the peppers shown above were packaged and put in the freezer whole.

Diamond Eggplants

The Diamond eggplants came through for me this year in spite of the cool weather. Most of these were preserved. I preserved some of them using an Italian method, Sott'Olio, literally under oil. They were sliced, poached in a water and vinegar solution, left to dry for a couple of hours in the sun, and then packed into jars with seasonings and olive oil. They will keep in the refrigerator for months. The smallest eggplant were steamed until tender, then stuffed with a garlic, oregano, and pepper flake mixture and packed into jars and covered with white wine vinegar. And the rest of them were sliced and grilled and frozen.

Eggplant prepared for preserving Sott'Olio

The Petaluma Gold Rush beans are drying on the plants. I started collecting and shelling them this past week. There's still a lot of them left on the plants.

Petaluma Gold Rush Beans

And surprise, surprise! The rats didn't munch my raspberry vines down to the ground this year and I actually get to enjoy a few berries every once in a while. I'm not getting enough of these to bother with putting them in the harvest totals.

Autumn Bliss raspberries

The tomato harvests continue to trickle in. I made a couple more batches of Moroccan Tomato Jam and froze it. Some tomatoes were bagged and frozen whole. I dried the Aunt Ruby's cherry tomatoes, they're large enough to make a nice dried tomato. There's one batch of oven roasted tomato sauce in the freezer.  And the rest of the tomatoes have been consumed or given away.

And the zucchini plants put out one more flush of blossoms that was large enough to gather and stuff, most likely the last time for this year.


Here's the harvests for the past week:

Petaluma Gold Rush beans - 1 lb., 7 oz.
Diamond eggplant - 7 lb.,  4.5 oz.
Sweetie Baby romaine lettuce - 2 lb.
Aji Pineapple peppers - .25 oz.
Chorizero peppers -  3.25 oz.
Cuerno de Cabra peppers - 9 oz.
De La Vera peppers - 10 oz.
Espelette peppers - 6.75 oz.
Guyana peppers - 7.5 oz.
Iberian Cayenne peppers - 3 oz.
Madrid Bell Sweet peppers - 17 oz.
PI593480 (Morocco) peppers - 13.25 oz.
Topepo Rosso peppers - 1 lb., 10 oz.
Ananas Noir tomatoes - 8.25 oz.
Andine Cornue tomatoes - 1 lb., 3.5 oz.
Aunt Ruby's Cherry tomatoes - 1 lb., 10 oz.
Chocolate Stripes tomatoes - 2 lb., 7.5 oz.
Galinas cherry tomatoes - 1 lb., 9.5 oz.
Gigantesque tomatoes - 3 lb., 6.25 oz.
Katja tomatoes - 4 lb., 5 oz.
Lenny and Gracie's Kentucky heirloom tomatoes - 1 lb., 15.25 oz.
Not Wes tomatoes - 3 lb., 7.5 oz.
Zucchini - 3 lb., 5.5 oz.
Zucchini blossoms - 3.5 oz.

The total harvests for the week were: 40 lb., 12.25 oz.
The total for the year is: 544 lb., 9.25 oz.

Head on over to Daphne's Dandelions, the home of Harvest Monday, to see lots more harvests from other garden bloggers.