peppers Archives : Cast Iron Forest to Skillet

2023-11-232023-11-23

11/22/2023 shakshuka dinner

Shakshuka and couscous next to a bowl of salad — Shakshuka is a Mediterranean/North African dish that uses a lot of bell peppers in the tomato sauce. We had frozen slices of bell peppers from the last harvest this year before first frost. Yum!

2023-10-292023-10-29

10/29/2023 first freeze forecast tonight

Piles of vegetable greenery on a concrete front poor with a black double door in the background — So, in spite of rain all day and temperatures in the 30s F, I went out and cut all the plants. That’s the giant pile of cut basil on an overflowing Rubbermaid tub and assorted cut off pepper plants nearby. The rest of the day was getting basil leaves off the stems.

An inch thick basil stem cut off, with my hand nearby for scale. — The basil stems were so big I had to use the loppers to cut them at the base.

A blue-gray rubber made plastic tub almost full of bright green basil leaves — 3608 grams of basil leaves. This is 7.95 pounds. Yes, we did tare the tub weight. Yes, it is a lot of basil. No, I don’t even know what’s going to happen.

Close up view of a red and blue striped leaf hopper. Its legs and tip of snoot grade to yellow. It has tiny hair like antennae. — Leafhopper

A small true bug nymph on my fingers. It’s small enough that you don’t see around my whole finger. The brown colors are speckled — Leafhopper

2023-10-282023-10-28

10/28/2023 dinner

Refried beans with chunks of feta cheese, a pile of Mexican rice, and a corn tortilla loaded with pork, avocado, lettuce, onions
, cilantro, and the flavorful pepper hot sauce. — Paula made refried beans with bolas maycoba beans from last year as well as some Rancho Gordo beans of some variety. The Chef made a pepper hot sauce from all the ripe Chimayó chile peppers in the garden plus everything pepper leftover in the freezer, including farm share jalapeños, two year old poblanos from the garden, and assorted mystery peppers.

2023-10-202023-10-20

10/17/2023 autumnal

A black and yellow striped bee fly with dark tipped wings is feeding on the tiny flowers of a Heath aster. The flowers have white petals and yellow centers and cover the whole branch profusely. — Heath asters were buzzin‘!

The small fuzzy body of a common eastern bumblebee worker is dwarfed by the long purple covered flower stalk of Liatris mucronata. — Common Eastern bumblebees were all over both the Heath asters and these Liatris mucronata.

I’m holding a branch of Euphorbia steady so we can see the fuzzy rust-colored arctiid caterpillar hiding under a leaf. The sunlight catches the very long hairs that extend beyond its main dense body of bright orange-brown fuzzy hairs. — Wooly bear!

Faded tomato cages hold a series of fruiting pepper plants and blooming marigold plants. — Marigolds doing well around the sweet peppers.

A closer view of the bright orange marigold flowers dotting their pointed leaves. The plants are lush and only partly contained by the faded red tomato cages. — A close up of the same marigolds. They really thrive in the fall.

2023-09-272023-09-27

09/27/2023 Thai larb

A half empty bowl of steamed rice awaits lettuce and laab, piled on nearby dishes. — Paula and The Chef collaborated on tonight’s dinner. Larb (or laab) is a meat salad. We used the lettuce leaves as little scoops/wraps and put rice with each scoop. Very tasty. From the garden, the larb contained Chimayó peppers and mint. It was delicious.

2023-09-092023-09-10

09/02/2023 behind on peppers

A peeling white enameled metal colander full of red, orange, brown, and yellow peppers of various shapes and sizes. — I got very behind on the garden and the blog the last few weeks with my household humans on a trip. The cats said they needed feeding and it just kept happening! The long skinny peppers in the colander are Corbaci peppers. The upper left conical red one is an Apple Pepper (I assume it’s named for the shape). The lower left orange one was California Wonder bell. The lower right brown one is a Chocolate Bell.

Peppers seeds and a wrinkly whole red apple pepper in a white bowl with black stripes bordering the rim. — Some peppers, like these apple peppers, were at a stage where I’ve just extracted their seeds to save.

Tomato sauced bow tie pasta is heaped with veggies and feta cheese, with a side of buttered sourdough bread on a white plate with stripe and square black border. — Mom made a delicious dish of veggies, pasta, and beans for dinner during her and Dad’s visit! From the garden, it had apple peppers and California Wonder peppers (both sweet bell-ish types) in it, as well as fresh basil and oregano.

2023-09-072023-09-07

09/07/2023 paella

Garden ingredients are garlic, saffron and Corbaci pepper. All other veggies except carrots were from the farm share. Shrimp and rice from the grocery store.

2023-07-212023-07-21

07/19/2023 Corbaci peppers happy

A tall spindly pepper plant with green leaves. There are at least nine long skinny yellow-green curly peppers on the plant, which is supported by a fading red round tomato cage. — This is the biggest of our five pepper plants and it’s having a lot of fruits!

2023-05-132023-05-14

05/13/2023 room for pepper

Paula pulled up a garlic that was too near the interplanted peppers. Wow was it big!!!

2023-03-222023-03-22

03/22/2023 nighttime-only cat! babies!!! And dinner!

Briar helpfully alerted me to a potential friend carefully crossing the back fence today! What a magnificent neighbor.

Turns out a few peach flowers survived.

The ones with dropped petals are quite striking with pale tips over maroon backgrounds!

I believe this is the annual (?) Cardamine sp from nearby seeded into the prickly pear planter.

Abby has kindly identified this as a human-introduced species Armeria serpyllifolia, thyme-leaved sandwort. It isn’t from North American originally but doesn’t seem to dramatically disturb the landscape.

This one may be an introduced chickweed. But a fuzzy one, not Stellaria media.

More baby inland sea oat seedlings in a second pot!my

Multiple baby native Rosa sp from Fannin Co TX. Thanks Mom!

This seems big enough to be the persimmon I actually planted??

Seedlings in false gaura pot, but not sure they look right.

Oklahoma penstemon given to me by a kind fellow Norman citizen!

Maybe smartweed amongst the Chenopodium. We shall see.

A Datura maybe?? The label fell out of this pot. Anybody recognize this seed?

I am informed the mustard leaf garnish is from garden and that the soup contains poblanos from last year from the freezer.