Harvest Monday - August 6, 2012

It's Monday! Time to share my harvest from last week with Daphne for Harvest Monday.

Last week, I was able to harvest a little bit of various things: longhorn pepper, pablano peppers, roma tomatoes and ichiban eggplant. The meat of the pablano peppers are really thin. I have yet to try them...I'm thinking they may be good for stuffed peppers - or maybe a salad.

I also tried something new. I've been wanting to try making my own sprouts. Bean sprouts is one of those vegetables that if you buy and leave it in the fridge, it quickly goes bad. I usually don't want to use a whole package, so like the cilantro, it always rots in my fridge. I've been reading that it is really easy to sprout mung beans so I thought I'd give it try. After an overnight soak, the mung beans were already beginning to sprout.

After overnight soak

By day 4, they were already ready to eat. I let it go for couple more days and had it with a salad. It was really delicious! I think I will continue to make small portions of bean sprouts.

Day 4

Oven dried red pepper flakes - DO NOT INHALE!

The longhorn super hot peppers are going strong and I've been harvesting about 1-2 a day. I didn't know what to do with them so they've been sitting on my countertop. I decided I will try to make oven-dried red pepper flakes. Here are the beautiful red longhorn peppers.

Cleaned and dried red peppers

I cut off the stem and sliced them in half (do not get them on your lips or eyes!). 

I popped them in the oven at 150C (the lowest temperature on my oven) and cooked them for about 2 hours.  If you do this, it might be good to open the windows because the fumes will make you cry. I probably left the peppers in the oven for too long or I should have flipped them around a little bit more - they were crispy but a little burnt. 

I then threw them into the blender to break them down. When you do this, DO NOT open the blender and breathe in the red pepper powder! You will be in great pain, really. The final red pepper flake is really spicy but absolutely delicious. I have used them on pasta - you just need a little pinch and it will spice up your dish. Delicious!

Harvest Monday - July 23, 2012

I didn't harvest too much last week. The tomatoes in the community garden is starting to brown but there are still a lot of green tomatoes. I'm going to try fertilizing to see if I can keep it alive long enough for the tomatoes to ripen. I did harvest one mortgage lifter - it was cracked a little from all the rain we got last week but it looks nice and plump. The longhorn peppers are turning bright red. They are beautiful and also really spicy. I don't really know what to do with them. My first thought is to dry them and make pepper powder.

Mortgage lifter, supersweet 100, longhorn pepper

The basil is thriving and getting large. I transfered some of the plants so they have more space to grow. I harvested a bowlful to make some pesto. I just love the smell of fresh basil.

I'm linking to the weekly Harvest Monday hosted by Daphne to share my mini-harvest.