August Harvest

 August in the Garden

I had a pleasant morning Saturday walking in my garden and harvesting all the beautiful things coming from my garden.  It was so satisfying.  Bringing everything into the house and piling  it on the counter and showing it off to my family.  My son Josh and I were talking about all the different things we could do with the veggies.  we cooked the green beans for dinner with just salt,  pepper and a little onion.  I chopped up some  peppers and vacuum sealed them.   I was able to get 15 one cup packages to put  in the freezer for use later in the year.  I will use them in recipes that call for cooked peppers.  Recipes such as red beans and rice,  jambalaya, soups, it is endless the possibilities.

I made roasted tomato green pepper salsa.

ROASTED TOMATO AND PEPPER SALSA

The recipe isn’t an exact one.  I use what we like in ours, but you can add what you like.

Tomatoes, green peppers, jalapeno, one hot banana pepper, onion, garlic and a little lemon juice.  I made sure everything was washed well and dried.  Each vegetable is then rubbed with olive oil and placed in a baking dish.  I sprinkled kosher salt over all the vegetables then place pan in oven  preheated to 400 degrees.  Roast them in the oven for about 45 minutes allow them to cool a little so you can handle them.  Remove the skins and place the vegetables in the food processor with cilantro and some cumin whizzing them just briefly.  Serve with tortilla chips. This can be put in jars and processed if you would like to.   I ran into a slight problem  with mine though  I  put too many hot peppers in the salsa.  I got Josh to taste it, he immediately started coughing and got the hiccups.   Lets just say it was hot,  but that is an easy fix.  I roasted more veggies and leaving  out the hot peppers adding more veggies solved the problem  .  It was delicious even when it was way too hot.  This recipe you just have to experiment adding what you prefer  some people want it real hot, some like it more mild.  Some people hate cilantro, some people love it.  Just add what your family likes and leave out what they don”t.

 

 

I had some volunteer plants that came up in my garden on their own.  I had beautiful sunflowers that came up all over the place.  They are my favorite flower so of course I let them grow.  I just said thank you God!

 

Another bunch of volunteers were yellow cherry tomatoes, again I just let them grow.

I was able to just let them grow because they didn’t come up in my traditional garden.  They were in my cottage garden near my little greenhouse.  I may do a blog in the future showing  my raised bed garden and my wonderful greenhouse.  It is small but you would be amazed at the things I have produced out of that little space.

Until next time,

Cathy Lackey