Sunday, November 18, 2012

A Peck of Peppers

 One peck is 8 dry quarts, or 1/4 of a bushel.
Yeah, I don't know what to make of that either....
Well, I am not Peter Piper, and the peppers are not pickled, but I probably picked a peck of them this evening with the help of the oldest boy and his flashlight. The cold wind and clear skies spell killing frost to me, so I thought I should get them done ASAP.

Then, I get them into the house, and the wife says- "Where did these come from? It's mid-November!"
So, anyway, since we cannot possibly use them all fresh, I diced up a kilo of them, wrapped them in 100g packets, and put them in the ziplock. The only problem is that if I did all of them except for the 10-15 we might get through fresh, we would have a freezer of nothing but peppers...

Hellooooo neighbors and students!!!! Or if you live in Japan and want to share the bounty, drop me an e-mail.

But at any rate, if you find yourself with a peck of peppers and some freezer space, just dice them up and put them in sandwich bags or plastic wrap, then into a big ziplock and freeze them. You don't need to blanch them, making peppers the easiest garden veggie to freeze for the winter.

This winter's spaghetti sauce will be twice as good due to these beauties.


Now what to do with 2 Kg of green paste tomatoes.... Suggestions?

6 comments:

  1. Um. What exactly are green paste tomatoes? I might have a suggestion or two for you.

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    1. They are San Marzano paste tomatoes that didn't have a chance to ripen. Usually I would use them for spaghetti sauce, if they were ripe.

      Since the post, I put a bunch in a plastic bag with a potato (for the ethelyne gas) and another bunch in a basket and set them in a warm place to ripen. The rest are in a net bag in the cool hallway closet. I am hoping the ones with the potato will ripen in about a week, the basket in two, and then I can just keep on cycling the other green ones through and have tomatoes for another month or two. Will it work? Only time will tell.

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  2. Tomatoes like dark places to ripen. I normally will put mine in a paper bag with the top side down, and they will slowly turn red. You can also put them on a table and cover them with newspaper. Not so sure about the plastic bag, I think they need to breathe. Let me know if those work out for you. Otherwise, I would make tomato pickles or green tomato relish.

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    1. yeah, I kinda ruined 5 of them in the plastic. The ones in the basket are ripening, but there are a lot of culls.

      Thanks for the tips tho!

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  3. About your peppers..have you thought of drying them? I got myself a nice American Harvest Dehydrator on the US Amazon (even with shipping, you save like 2000 yen over the Japanese Amazon.) and I dried a bunch of tomatoes, kakis, apples, herbs, etc.

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    Replies
    1. I did think of drying them, but freezing was faster and probably easier (for peppers) since I don't have a dehydrator. It is on the wishlist though...

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