I am both pleased and honored to serve as host site of the Harvest Monday celebration since Daphne has decided to ‘retire’ from blogging. I don’t remember how I initially found Daphne’s blog, but I first started linking up to Harvest Monday back in March, 2010. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long ago. I quickly found it was not just a place to show off my harvests, but also a supportive place to learn and share. Hopefully it can continue as long as there are gardeners who want to join in. And now, on to the harvests!
Slicing tomatoes are getting hard to find, but I did bring in a few last week. That’s Chef’s Choice Orange, Celebrity and Jetsetter in the below photo. They weren’t real big but they were certainly welcome. It hasn’t exactly been a great tomato year here, and the hybrid slicers have saved the day since the heirloom slicers have given us nothing.
slicing tomatoes
The Chef’s Choice Orange got sliced and eaten along with a lentil salad my wife cooked up. I think these tomatoes have a great taste and a nice balance between acid/sweet. One of our sweet red peppers and a bit of parsley went into the lentil dish, which she made with Spanish Pardina lentils.
Chef’s Choice Orange tomatoes with lentil salad
A flush of eggplant came on last week. That’s Dancer, Fairy Tale and Calliope in the below photo. Most of those wound up on the grill.
harvest of eggplant
I harvested quite a few Biggie Chili and Anaheim peppers for roasting and smoking. I roast these NuMex types on the grill, then peel and seed them before freezing them for later use. You can read more about how I do it in a post from last year: Roasting Fresh Chili Peppers. In the below photo you can see Biggie Chili on the left and Anaheim on the right. The hybrid Biggie Chili peppers aren’t really much bigger than the o/p Anaheim, but there are usually more of them.
Biggie Chili(L) and Anaheim(R) peppers
I also harvested all of the ripe Tam jalapenos I could find. I’m growing Tam this year in the hopes it will make peppers that are a bit milder than the typical jalapeno. I smoked all of these, along with some of the ripe NuMex types.
Tam jalapeno peppers
Last week we finally got a decent rain. It rained most of the day Tuesday, so I made it a bread baking day. I baked up a batch of Moomie’s Famous Burger Buns, using 50% Red Fife whole wheat flour. I have been loving this wheat for bread, which is a good thing since I recently bought a big tub of it to grind into flour.
Moomie’s buns made with Red Fife wheat
I also baked a couple of loaves of sandwich bread. I made a whole wheat bread using a recipe from Whole Grain Breads by Machine or Hand by Beatrice A. Ojakangas. It has 50% whole wheat flour and is enriched with milk, butter and honey. I use the dough cycle on the bread machine, then bake the bread in a 8-1/2″ x 4-1/2″ loaf pan. I made one loaf using Red Fife flour and the other using Prairie Gold white whole wheat flour. I grind all of our whole grain flours using a Nutrimill grain mill. As you can see in the below photo, the Red Fife loaf rose a little higher, though that could be due to a number of things. Both were tasty, though the Red Fife loaf had a more pronounced whole wheat flavor which I thought was a good thing.
Red Fife bread(L) and Prairie Gold bread(R)
The homemade bread and the slicing tomatoes were blissfully wedded on some BLTs we had for dinner one night. That’s Chef’s Choice Orange peeking out on my sandwich in the below photo. The lettuce isn’t from our garden but that’s ok because for me the tomato is usually the star of a BLT. It made for tasty eating regardless!
BLT with Chef’s Choice Orange tomatoes
Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.
As always, very impressive.
Don’t think my first comment went through? I was wondering about the cracking on the jalapenos and if it means they are overripe? Most of mine this year were like that. I’ve seen it before, just seemed more common this year for my jalapenos to crack.
Thanks again for taking on the Harvest Monday.
The lines on the jalapenos are called corking. It’s a genetic trait tied to certain pepper varieties, especially jalapenos. It’s harmless, though it can make the peppers harder to sell since many consumers like their fruits blemish free.
Hi Dave, and thank you for keeping Harvest Monday alive! I like blogposts where the author writes abut what they have done with their harvests, like you have done here. I am also very keen on making bread these days, so your post is of special interest to me.
Nice end of the season tomatoes. I am always thankful for the last few fruit and you put them to great use. Your blt looks delicious. My Anaheim didn’t do very well this year, I hope some fresh seeds and an earlier start will improve their yield next year. Yours look perfect. I will make note of Biggie Chili hybrid. Thank you for hosting Harvest Monday!
The Biggie Chili fruit is very similar to Anaheim in size and heat level, but I think since it’s a hybrid it’s a bit earlier and a tad more prolific.
Thank you Dave for keeping Harvest Monday alive! Love seeing what others are harvesting. And of course yours is gorgeous as always, with very vibrant colors and I’m sure everything taste wonderful.
Thanks for keeping Harvest Monday going. I look forward to reading your blog more regularly!.
Beautiful tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers! And looking at that BLT is making me starving even though it’s only 10AM. Thanks so much Dave for taking the reins for Harvest Monday.
Thank you for keeping this going. Going out to the garden now to plant garlic and pull the peppers. May be some on there to harvest. I’ll post later.
Sending again as it did not go through! Hi! My Tomatoes did not do well this year also. Small but tasty. Those Burger Buns and Bread sure do look delicious. I tried to make buns once but they didn’t turn out. Maybe should try again! Thanks for hosting Harvest Monday for us! Nancy
Thanks for picking up harvest Monday. It’s nice to see how everyone else is doing, and I’m always finding helpful tips.
I’m looking forward to the baking posts too.
I tend to do bake more sandwich bread in summer because we do like our sammies. I bake more of a variety of things in winter, and more often too since we tend to eat soups then and for me a bowl of soup just needs some bread to go with it!
Dave, Thanks so much for keeping the Monday Harvest Report going! I’m looking forward to spending a little more time on your blog!! We also had a terrible tomato year! But we are having a long warm fall with no frost so far so that is giving the tomatoes still on the vine time to ripen!
We tend to grow more cherry tomatoes than anything else as they are so sweet and tasty and very prolific too. They also seem less fussy to grow.
Some chile afficionados think corking on Japapeños is a sign of superior flavor so it looks like you’ve got some superior peppers there. I’m curious to know how hot the Tam variety is, I thought it’s supposed to be pretty mild. It would probably be more mild coming from my garden since hot peppers just don’t seem to develop a lot of heat in my mild climate. I may have to try Chef’s Choice next year, let it go head to head with my favorite orange tomato Jaune Flamme. We’ve been enjoying BLT’s lately also, but I like mine on foccacia, I baked up a batch just for BLT’s.
Thanks for taking on Harvest Monday Dave. I can imagine that Daphne had a nice relaxing Sunday evening, no worries about getting the Harvest Monday post up in time.
I haven’t tasted the jalapenos yet. I had so few I wanted to use them all for chipotles. They are almost finished drying so I should know soon. I used to grow Jaune Flamme here. I love the taste but the vines tended to die off before I got much of a harvest.
Beautiful harvests as usual, Dave! I really must get back into the bread baking game – I seem to go in spurts…make a lot of bread, then get busy and it’s all shop bought for a few months. Now that winter is almost here, I’m hoping to fill the kitchen with the smell of homemade bread more often.
There is nothing like the smell of bread baking!
I too thank you for taking over Harvest Monday I know you will do a wonderful job.
I did not have a great tomato year either, blaming it on the weather but I do think it is the location, not enough sun, next year.
What a lovely lot of harvests. The tomatoes look yummy, and the bread looks fantastic. Our bread machine has been broken for a while but we’re lucky to have a good bakers stall on the market that does a really good sourdough.
And thank you so much for hosting HM, I’m looking forward to reading more about your growing, harvesting and eating exploits.
I just want to reiterate what everyone else has said. Thanks for taking over Harvest Mondays. It really makes me happy to know that it will live on.
So glad to see you’ve taken on Harvest Monday for Daphne! Thank you for that! I’ll share here when I can 🙂
Lovely harvests, as always.