Welcome to Harvest Monday, where we celebrate all things harvest related. Last week I harvested a few new things from the garden and also dealt with past harvests that needed further processing. Before the first freeze came I picked all the pods from the Good Mother Stallard beans and brought them in to dry a bit before shelling. After shelling I weighed the beans and they yielded a bit more than 12 ounces. It’s not a huge yield but we’ll get a couple of meals from them. They are a nice firm bean for soups and I often use them in minestrone or other vegetable soups.
Good Mother Stallard beans
I also harvested all the remaining pods from the tepary beans. Some of them were not completely dry, so I will wait before weighing them up. I’ll do another update on the whole tepary bean experiment once I get the final totals in. That’s the Sacaton Brown variety in the below photo, which is very similar to the brown tepary beans I have bought in the past. When the beans are good and dry I’ll tally up the weight and do a recap on the tepary bean growing experiment. I will say I have been pleased with the results and plan on growing them again next year.
Sacaton Brown tepary beans
Coming in fresh from the garden were a couple of the Kossak kohlrabi. They’ve done well this fall, and have been averaging around 1.5 pounds each. We most often eat them raw, with a little yogurt-tahini dip.
Kossak kohlrabi
With rain forecast, I cut two more cabbages to keep them from splitting. It’s one head each of Farao and Parel in the below photo. They weren’t real big, a little over a pound each, but we still had one large head in the refrigerator which meant I needed to get with it and make some cabbage disappear.
Farao and Parel cabbage
I used one of the heads to make a batch of slaw. I found a few of our spring carrots to grate up and the last Red of Tropea onion to add to the cabbage. I tossed the slaw with a vinegar and oil dressing and it made a side dish to some burgers I served up on homemade buns one night for dinner. It’s my wife turn to cook this week and now she has the rest of the cabbage to deal with!
slaw with burger
I finished drying up the last of the smoked peppers. In the below photo the long peppers are Holy Mole while the blocky ones are both green and red Ancho 211. For some reason I usually have a hard time getting ancho peppers to ripen here before frost, and this year was no different. I’ve tried several varieties, but Ancho 211 is my best producer so far. Holy Mole is a hybrid version of the Pasilla Bajio pepper, and it is a great performer here for me.
smoked and dried Holy Mole and Ancho 211 peppers
I use the dried peppers for a number of dishes, but one of my current favorites is making enchiladas. I was never really happy with my homemade ones until I finally found a good recipe for the sauce. It’s my version of one from a book called Gourmet Gringo by Mari Meyers that I picked up on one of our trips to the Southwest. I use our plain, unseasoned tomato sauce along with lots of Homemade Chile Powder and a little bit of minced garlic to make a Red Chile Sauce. This batch of sauce had some of the smoked Holy Mole and NuMex types in it, and I poured it over corn tortillas that were stuffed with refried Rio Zape beans. I added a little crumbled Queso Chihuahua over the top and I had a meal for me plus leftovers for the freezer!
bean enchiladas
I’ll close with one more pepper I dried, the Feher Ozon paprika pepper. I neglected to photograph any before I dried them, but they are a blocky thick-walled pepper that matures from whitish to yellow to red when fully ripe. I let these get red before harvesting, then split them open and removed the seeds and membrane before dehydrating. They made a lovely paprika powder after grinding, and I will be growing this one again next year.
dehydrated Feher Ozon peppers
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 share, add your name and blog link to Mr Linky below. And be sure and check out what everyone is harvesting!
The Good Mother Stallard beans are so pretty and like the fact that they remain firm after cooking, do the colors remain after cooking? I am having kohlrabi envy, critters ate all my fall plantings.
The GMS beans lose their vivid colors when cooked, but you can still see the markings:
https://www.ourhappyacres.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/goodmothercooked.jpg
Too bad about your kohlrabi. Thankfully they left most of mine alone this year.
Thanks for the photo, the cooked beans sure look plump and tasty, making me hungry.
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That’s a good use for your dried peppers; the enchiladas look delicious. Everything else looks great too.
I’m always on the lookout for recipes that make good use of chillis, and your Enchiladas fit the bill nicely, though I’d probably need to use a different cheese. Here in the UK kits for making cheese at home are getting very popular. Have you tried making cheese? It sounds like the sort of thing you would be good at.
I made ricotta cheese once, but that is the only kind I’ve tried. It does sound like fun to make cheese, but also a lot of work.
That Kohlrabi looks awesome! Love the colorful beans and the enchiladas. For the paprika do you peel peppers or keep skins on?
I leave the skins on. I remove the seeds because I don’t think they add to the flavor, and they lighten the color of the paprika. Of course if it’s a hot pepper then they also add heat.
Nice harvest considering it is the last week in October and you’ve had your first frost. The enchiladas look and sound wonderful. I still have dried Santa Fe Grande peppers left from last year. I should use them that way. Dehydrators aren’t a practical option for me with the high humidity two blocks from the ocean. Last year I dried them in my car at work (which is inland) on a day in the 80’s. It took about six hours in my solar dehydrator.
We’ve never growing beans for frying, must admit I’m a little bit worried about poisoning us if I do it wrong. I love coleslaw especially home-made. We have no harvest to show this week as for one reason or another we haven’t managed to get to the plot at all.
The dried peppers look great. I’m thinking that might be a good way to take some of the harvest volume out of our freezer and put it into our pantry. Next year!
We tried growing our own dried beans for the first time this year! The yields were so small that I’m not sure we will do it again. Too much space for such a small yield. Your cabbages look fantastic. I didn’t get any in this fall, we had so many in the spring that my wife told me she was tired of cabbage and not to plant them!! 🙂
The dried beans aren’t a good use of space, that’s for sure. I only planted six cabbages this fall, and that was plenty for the two of us!
Big Yum, those enchiladas look delicious. I love the idea of using the homemade chile powder in the sauce. I’ve used a method where you soak dried peppers and then scrape the flesh off the skin and puree it into the sauce. The chile powder method would be much easier.
Dried beans may not be the most efficient use of space but I think it’s worth the space to get to try interesting beans that aren’t available unless you grow your own. I have to remember to add some tepary beans to the mix for next year.
I’ve made the sauce with soaked peppers like you describe, and this way is easier. I toasted the chile powder (3 Tbsp) in a bit of oil for a minute, then added 2 cups of unseasoned tomato sauce and 1 clove of minced garlic. I added salt to taste and water as needed to thin the sauce. I thought the smoked peppers added a nice touch and another layer of flavor.
Beautiful harvests – those enchiladas looks so yummy! We recently had some (not homemade sadly) and they did spark a wave of “I should make these at home” in me. I wish I a good, homemade chili powder but my attempts at drying my chili’s were less then impressive – I’ll have to give it another go next year. Hopefully I’ll have a dehydrator by then to help me out on that front.
Like you I’ve also been catching up with processing past harvests. I still have my beans to deal with, however – they have been drying in my garage for the past few weeks. I actually love shelling beans in front of the tv. I’ll get to it this week for sure…well, as soon as the garlic is planted that is 😉
I love vegetarian enchilladas! Your red chilli sauce has me salivating. Next year I hope to make more use of my dehydrator, I would never had thought of doing chillies, so thanks for that.
The dehydrator gets a lot of use here for so many things. All the peppers dry real well for me, and the paprika and chile powders are so tasty and unique.
That burger and slaw looks delicious. I still haven’t tried to make the hamburg buns again. When I run out of my boughten chili powder I think I will try to make my own also. I wrote a comment before but not sure if it went through. You can delete it if it did. Nancy
Mmm the slaw looks yummy, I’ve been making it with red cabbage recently (not homegrown). So much nicer, healthier and cheaper than shop bought.
Ooh, those enchiladas!! Since reading about you grinding your dried peppers to make your own chili powder, I’ve been meaning to do that this year. And I forgot … so thanks for the reminder. I’ll be grinding my dried peppers this weekend and enchiladas seem like an awfully delicious way to use some!
I never realised you could make your own paprika! I’m definitely going to try that next year!
It’s easy-peasy to make paprika! The peppers need to be crisp dry before you grind them, but a variety of peppers work well.