Peppers, Peppers Everywhere

Orange pepper…reflected on my kitchen counter

Peppers are everywhere at this time of year!  I’m not complaining. I did plant a lot of them. But it’s amazing how selective amnesia makes me forget that when peppers ripen, they all come in at once. We must pick a huge bowl full of them every day.  But what to do with them?

I’ve written about canning them…and making the delicious recipe from the book “Preserving the Harvest” for pickled peppers. It’s a great recipe, but it is time consuming.  Any canning recipe can be time consuming.  First, the peppers must be washed, cored, washed again and sliced into strips. Then there is the preparation of the canning solution, boiling the water, cleaning the jars and so forth.  It is an all-afternoon task I typically reserve for the weekends.

Green peppers in my kitchen

One quick way I have found to save peppers is to blanch and freeze them.  I purchased square freezer containers in bulk and I blanch the peppers for as long as the cookbook says, then pack them tightly into the freezer containers.  I make sure to label them with the date and year so I know to use the older ones first.  When defrosted, they are great for pepper steak or stir fry recipes.

I don’t do anything special to grow them.  Good vegetables always begin with good soil. I start the seeds indoors in the spring, purchasing any good-quality green bell pepper seeds.  Then after the last danger of frost is past, I transplant the peppers into the vegetable garden area.  We did use the soaker hoses this year, which I think helped them young plants survive the early heat and drought.  The plants themselves remain small but are, as you can see, producing abundant vegetables

We’re enjoying the fresh peppers in dishes such as stuffed peppers, sausage and peppers, and home-made stir fry with chicken.  But there are a lot of peppers…everywhere!

Green Bell Peppers