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.