Cheapskate Rural Dweller: pepper

Showing posts with label pepper. Show all posts

Super Sides: Stuffed Pasilla Peppers

I like stuffed bell peppers but, for some reason, these mild peppers give me an acute case of heartburn. The hotter pasilla chiles don't so I use them instead, just like I would bell peppers.

Here is a very good and easy recipe for them, similar to jalapeno poppers.

INGREDIENTS
3 large pasilla peppers
1/4 pound cream cheese

Slice open the pasilla chiles. Remove the seeds inside if you want to reduce the heat. Slide in some cream cheese.

Loosely wrap with foil paper.

Put on a barbecue grill, direct heat, with the foil open at the top for half an hour.

Darryl
Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

A Labor of Love

Well, Labor Day 2015 has just passed, marking the unofficial end of summer. How did our garden do? This year was much better than last. We had a lot more good news than bad.

Let's start with the good stuff and save the bad for next time.

On the sweet side of things, the guavas are ready to start picking. Some are already dropping on the ground. Lots of fruit on this tree.

The dragon fruit aren't ripe yet but they're getting there.

The tomatoes have done great. Three plants have put out enough that we haven't had to buy tomatoes for two months now. Maybe not enough to share with all the neighbors but a banner year still, especially compared to the lousy year we had last year.

The hybrid has put out many in clusters like this.

The heirloom has been a bit stingier, only giving us about a half dozen but they were pretty big, tasty, and spectacular.

Although the leaves could look healthier, the hanging cherry tomato has been loaded down all summer with tiny, tasty fruit.

On the spicy side of things, the pasilla I planted last year that I gave up on because it was ravaged by squirrels has made a comeback and is providing a good, late harvest. When done, I will transplant it into a more suitable spot.

Another plant that was rodent plagued last year was our Anaheim chile plant. It has also produced handsomely this summer. Great with eggs or in salsa.

Need some more heat? I've got more than enough serrano and Thai chiles for the whole neighborhood. This shows just a tiny portion of those plants.

And coming soon, this Meyer lemon should be leading our late fall and winter citrus parade.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved.

Keeping up Appearances

Checking into the status of the garden. First, in this era a megadroughts, how about a look at water usage? It's raining today, that's good, but we're still under rationing.

Last month's bill was $17 and change. this compared to the same time last year when we paid, well, more (the water company's website is down and I can't look up last year's bill right now). There is also a strange credit on the bill of a couple of bucks, called the "CA: LA Payment Assistance" credit, that I don't know what it's for but in water usage, we used 6,732 gallons this May and 7,480 gallons last May.

My next door neighbor, who has a large green lawn that she only waters once a week, has a bill over $180 for the same period. Yikes!

The tomatoes are busting out all over. Many fruit on our hybrid plant and cherry tomato plant. The heirloom plant is showing lots of flowers but no fruit yet.

Our chiles are doing better this year. I used this Anaheim chile in our eggs this weekend and there's some gorgeous pasilla chiles on another plant. I'll maked stuffed peppers out of them someday.

Got six ears of corn showing so far.

The grapes are showing slight signs of smut so I hit them with some sulfur dust on Sunday.

My wife made me take the cage off of our zucchini, now it's showing signs of animal damage and I still haven't gotten any fruit. I put the cage back on, let's see how it does.

It's June. The vendor at the farmers market who sold us the dragon fruit plants told me to cut back by a third and we should see flowers by May. I did. Got lot's of new growth but no flowers or fruit yet.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Beyond the Bell Pepper

Picture courtesy of Leslie Seaton

under CC BY-SA 2.0 license

While I will get around to planting bell peppers this season, first I wanted to plant some pasilla chile.

The pasilla chile is a large pepper, usually used in dishes like chile relleno. It's a very mild pepper and, where bell pepper seems to generate a lot of stomach acid even though it has no heat at all for me, the pasilla leaves me without any indigestion afterward.

I was about to go to our local Latin supermarket to buy one and get the seeds out of it but my wife said she already had one so I scooped some seeds out of that.

I keep a few egg cartons on hand because our local egg ranch sells beautiful, loose jumbo brown eggs. Or they did, Friday was their last day in business so suddenly, I don't have such a pressing need to keep the egg cartons around anymore. I'm using one as a seed tray.

Fill it up with potting soil...

...put a couple of seeds in each compartment...

and water in.

I really hope these do well because I'd like to use them in place of bell peppers in many of my recipes.

Darryl

September Status

While I contemplate how I will rehabilitate my lawn this fall, I go to the back and ponder how that garden is doing. This plumeria is growing into our space so after it's growing season is over, I will lop of a few of the most offending canes.

When done, it should look something like this one, next to the grapevine.

This year, I planted mostly to have just enough veggies for the three of us. It worked well with the zucchini and bell peppers. Not so well with the tomatoes. And, some, like our patch of chile plants, are producing like there's no tomorrow.

I can't keep up with them all and some are just falling off, lying on the ground. Well, I'd rather have too much than not enough.

Another plant that is producing a bumper crop is our guava tree. We should start picking it in a week or two.

Although our regular tomato plants are a failed crop, I am getting some nice cherry tomatoes from this hanging basket by the kitchen.

They're great with bleu cheese on a salad.

I'll end this post with a quick look at our next delicious bell pepper crop. These are so tasty, I can't wait to have some more.

Darryl
Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Recipes for a Cheapskate: Poppin' Peppers

Too many things to do this weekend to really get the dirt under my fingernails but I did get to harvest my jalapeño plant.

As the peppers were starting to turn bright red, that signaled that the time had come.

I got 13 peppers, just enough to make into a side dish for this week's barbecue.
So what can I do? Make mini jalapeño poppers.
Easy in concept but the smaller size of these peppers make a bit hard to stuff.

Each pepper is sliced on one side, propped open, and stuffed with my homemade mixture of cream cheese, chopped serrano peppers, and bacon.

I wrap them up in foil, poke a few holes in the top, and then put on the grill with our burgers.

The finished product looks something like this.

Hot August Harvests

Harvest season is in full swing here at Cheapskate Farms.

Today, I'm concentrating on our chile peppers. Those are our two Serrano plants at the top.

This is our unknown, but much hotter, variety next to the played-out cornfield.

With a pair of gardening gloves, it's a snap to pinch them off of the plants.

Here's today's harvest with the Serrano on the right, the unknown variety on the left, and a couple of clusters of grapes from our vine.

Coming up will be Bell peppers, just about my favorite thing to grow...

...the soon-to-be spectacular looking Dragon Fruit...

...and the onions are ready too.

Recipes for a Cheapskate: Tomatillo Salsa

While I don't have a crop of tomatoes yet, I do have a lot of chiles and onions.

It's time to make this season's first batch of salsa.

I pick a handful of chiles, using a pastry box to keep the varieties separate. Serrano is on the left and the unknown variety on the right is a very much hotter chile.

I have to go to the store to get a tomato and some tomatillos. I peel the sheath off of the tomatillos, peel a small onion from the garden, and toss in a mixture of my red chiles.

Now, I move out to the patio and light up some coals on the barbecue.

I get a perforated tray to put the small chiles on and roast them, the tomatillos, tomatoes, and a couple of ears of corn for kicks on the grill over indirect heat. I'll move over to direct heat towards the end to get some char on them.

Finally, it all goes into a blender where I add minced garlic and salt to taste. Then it's done.

Most of this I will freeze until later this summer when the bell peppers are ready to eat. Then, I'll mix this salsa with cream cheese to make stuffed bell peppers.