KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013

Tag: peppers

What’s Happening in the Garden…

We planted some more today, and checked on a lot of our little plants. Here’s what’s growing around here… 

beans

Provider greenbeans (first planting of three so far)

peppers

Baby pepper plants: bell peppers, cayennes, jalapenos, and aji.

 


harvesting

Jason harvesting some greens for the chicken soup!

plants

Baby paste tomato plants and their friend, basil!

herbs

Oregano and thyme that came back strong from last year’s planting.

spearmint

Spearmint… What a wonderful smelling intruder!

beans

Beans round 2.

tomatillos

The tomatillos are looking great!

 

zucchini

Zucchini!

pond

Our little garden pond, beloved by fish, frogs, and our flowering comfrey plant.

 

potatoes

This year we’re growing our Irish potatoes in straw instead of in the groind… Should be easier to harvest!

  

cilantro

Our cilantro went to seed very early this year!

  

thyme

Thyme in a tire… What a perfect planter!

  

bed

A bed of snow peas, green onions, and carrots.

  

snow peas

Snow peas!

  

A beautiful, volunteer chia plant. What symmetry!

 
.:.

Farm Food Friday: Sausage Breakfast Casserole

This recipe is one of Jason’s favorites, and he insists on calling it “eggs” even though eggs are the least of its important ingredients. Oh, boys. :)

It is a variation on my Aunt Jill’s recipe. Here it is (a double batch, of course):

In a pot, cook 2 cups of dried grits (follow the directions on the bag to see how much water you need). Be sure to add salt to the water!

In a large pan, cook 1 or 2 pounds (it’s really up to you, meat-eaters) of Neese’s sausage. Once the sausage is nearly cooked, add a large onion (diced) to the pan. Also add 2 diced peppers.

Then add a lot of sliced mushrooms to the pan. Be sure to add salt, pepper, basil, and oregano (or whatever your favorite spices are).

When all this is done and the grits are also cooked, mix these ingredients and the grits together in a large mixing bowl.

Add 12 ounces of shredded cheddar cheese, 1/2 cup of butter, and 2/3 cups of milk to the warm mix. Stir all of this in thoroughly so that everything melts and blends together.

This is when I also add more of my spices: extra salt, pepper, basil, oregano, and some cayenne peppers for spice! Add more than you think of all of your spices (except maybe the cayenne)!

Beat 6 eggs well, and once the large, hot mixture cools down a bit, stir in the eggs. Be sure that the mix is not so hot that it cooks the eggs!

Butter your casserole dish(es) and pour in the mixture.

Bake at 350 degrees for at least 45 minutes but for less than 1 hour. Enjoy!

P.S. This recipe is so hearty that we usually eat it for dinner. But it’s also so easy to warm up for any quick meal, like breakfast. Just never freeze it! We tried that once and the texture was horrible!!!

.:.

Farm Food Friday: Jalapeño Jasmine Rice

Tired of having the same old kind of rice with your meals? Well, we certainly were, so we decided to do something about it! We spiced up our rice!

rice

Jalapeño Jasmine Rice!

This recipe came about because we had extra spices in our freezer. We’ve taken to putting different vegetables and herbs in the food processor and then putting the puréed concoction in ice cubes to freeze. Once they freeze, we take them out of the trays and store them in bags. It’s a great way to keep herbs on hand all throughout the year!

Here is the fun and easy recipe for Jalapeño Jasmine Rice (we made a huge pot!):

  • Put 4 cups of beef broth, 8 cups of water, 3 ice cubes of puréed jalapeño, 1 cube of puréed parsley, 1 cube of puréed cilantro, salt, garlic powder, and ground annatto in a large pot. Bring to a boil.
  • Once pot is boiling, add 8 cups of jasmine rice. Stir the pot and turn the temperature on low to medium-low so the pot simmers.
  • After about 20 minutes, check to see that the rice is done, and turn off the heat!

And that’s it! Enjoy!

Yummy!

Yummy!

.:.

processing and freezing jalapeño, aji, and cayenne peppers

our peppers are still coming in strong and we just picked a lot of them to prepare for our first frost which usually comes in around this time. although our weather has been warmer than the norm for this time, we could have our first frost anytime in the next few weeks. last year our first frost was mid-october, so we’re getting ready for it!

many of our peppers were ready to be picked: red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, aji peppers, and cayenne peppers. the spicy peppers have certainly done better than our sweet bell peppers this year, which is fine with us. although we love eating sweet bell peppers in stir fries or in roasted dishes, our spicy peppers are easy to preserve and they are wonderful when added into soups in sauces throughout the winter. we still have a few “cubes” of jalapeño puree in the freezer, and it’s always nice to see that you have a surplus, even if it is just a surplus of 5 spicy ice cubes!

after we picked this batch of peppers, we rinsed them, and decided to process and preserve them separately. we have an awesome little food processor that fits about a cup of ingredients at a time, and it is great for processing little batches without much cleanup.

i began with the least spicy of peppers, realizing that if i began with the cayennes , all of my other batches would be equally spicy! so, jalapeños went in first, being chopped into quarters and tossed into the processor with some olive oil. once all of these peppers  were pureed, i packed them into ice cube trays and stuck them in the freezer.

 

red and green jal

red and green jalapenos

after the jalapeños came the aji peppers, which are a little spicier and interestingly “empty” inside. let me explain… where green and red jalapeños are both very firm and meaty, aji peppers feel very flimsy and when cut open have such an open chamber inside that they resemble a smaller, wrinkly sweet bell peppers. after the aji peppers were processed, they were also added to the ice cube trays (taking up considerably less space than the jalapeños). 

delicious aji peppers... introduced to us in peru!

delicious aji peppers… introduced to us in peru!

after the aji peppers came the cayennes, and although i did my best, my fingers did start to burn after scooping out these pureed peppers and packing them into the trays. nothing like cayenne pepper juice to make your hands hot!

spicy cayennes

spicy cayennes

we filled up a little less than 2 ice cube trays, and oh, what a sight! the lovely green jalapeños (with some red flakes from the fully ripened red jalapeños), the carrot-orange aji peppers, and the bright red cayenne peppers make for lovely, colorful ice cubes. for now, if you include the other spicy peppers we’ve preserved so far, we’ve got a healthy store of spice for soups and sauce this winter!

jalapenos and aji peppers about to be turned into spicy ice cubes!

jalapenos and aji peppers about to be turned into spicy ice cubes!

.:.

loads of peppers and tomatoes

after what seemed like a very long and tiresome weekend, we were finally able to get back out in the garden and do some much needed picking!

our black plum and san marzano paste tomatoes are doing really well right now, and some of our cherokee purples are still making it.

also, the jalapenos have kicked off to an unbelievable degree (i got 20 large ones from one plant yesterday, still leaving tons of medium-sized and smaller ones)!

some of the cayennes were ripe and also some of our aji peppers (a delicious pepper that jason and i learned to love while we were in peru).

my heavy picking basket, filled with tomatoes, peppers, and some basil.

my heavy picking basket, filled with tomatoes, peppers, and some basil.

after picking,i estimated that i got about 20 pounds of these ingredients all together. i made a blended up, salsa-like concoction that we’ve frozen to use in sops and pastes in the future. it’s probably very spicy (considering the amount of jalapenos in it), so it will have to be added to other ingredients when we cook with it.

yum!

.:.

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