Every year I try a few new varieties or seeds. This year one of my new veggies is Turkish orange eggplant. It's a very small, round eggplant - about the size of a peach or small apple. I started them from seed and had a 100% transplant rate. The plants have proven to be very resilient and prolific. I am also loving that the fruits are ready gradually - we've been eating them regularly for several weeks and there is no end in site. Their small size makes it easy to make a small side dish - it doesn't have to be an eggplant centric meal. They taste similar to other types of eggplants I've tried - each variety being a little different. 

It's definitely a winner and I will be growing it again. So far my favorite way to cook it is to slice it on the mandolin, drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper, and put it in the oven, or toaster oven, until golden. Delicious!

It's mid August and I have an abundance of hot peppers. Due to Peppergate 2023, they aren't exactly the peppers I expected... I have a lot of hot banana peppers and a good amount of jalapenos too. It's a great excuse to write up a post about my favorite ways to preserve hot peppers.

Pickled hot peppers are my highest priority. We always have a jar in the fridge, they replace those little "old el paso" jalapeno jars we used to buy a lot. I use them whenever I need to add a "fresh" hot pepper in a recipe, including chilli rellenos casserole which is a favorite here.  The NCHFP, which is my source for most straightforward canning recipes, has a decent recipe here. I usually favor jalapeno peppers for this recipe but any type works.

The easiest way to put up hot peppers is to simply dry them. Using a needle, I thread them onto sewing thread and hang them in my kitchen. It's easy to tear one off and crumble it in a recipe for extra kick. I usually use small red chili peppers for this. It's great for smaller quantities of peppers, when there isn't quite enough to can.

Cowboy candy is a recipe that seems very popular in the US. It's sweet, spicy, and pickled all at the same time. Given the amount of sugar in it, it's a treat we eat in moderation - a tablespoon of cowboy candy on the side sure perks up wintertime meals. For special occasions, it's a great cracker topping and goes well with cheese, too. I heard some people eat it on ice cream but I'm not too sure about that. It's definitely a recipe worth trying once, it's unusual. I like to mix up the peppers I use in it, if I can have a mix of red, green and yellow, it makes a really attractive gift jar. There are lots of recipes online; here is one from Ball which is another source I trust for safe canning recipes.

Jalapeno poppers (or this, year banana poppers) are a great side dish. The cheese stuffing balances out the heat of the peppers. There are tons of recipes online, here is a simple vegetarian one I have been using this year. I usually make a big batch, we have a couple with our supper and I freeze the rest of the batch in food saver bags for special occasions. By packing them in a long skinny food saver bag, I can take out a couple and reseal the bag. 

Over the last year I have been experimenting more with fermenting vegetables, and I just made my first fermented hot sauce using hot banana peppers and jalapenos. Fermentation is very low effort compared to canning so I am very keen to practice it more. Here is the basic recipe I used for my first hot sauce fermentation. I am looking forward to experimenting with it more but I really love the results. 

It's also great to have peppers on hand because they are a common ingredient in all kinds of other canning recipes that I make in late summer and early fall - pasta sauce and salsa in particular. On the salsa side of things, I love to use our peppers in my ground cherry salsa or green tomato salsa. 

A few years ago Ray planted a couple of grape vines. The birds tend to steal them, so last year I had an idea and I covered the grapes with nylon stockings. I had a bunch of dollar store pantyhose and I cut it in sections, and knotted one end of each piece and slipped them over grape bunches. It worked great but was a little time consuming. This year, someone shared a brilliant idea on a gardening Facebook group- covering grapes with little organza drawstring bags commonly used for wedding favors or jewelry sales. I chose the 4 by 6 inch size which is perfect for most of my grape bunches. It was about $12 for a hundred bags which I will be able to reuse every year. It didn't take long to cover up my grapes and the birds will have to snack on wild grapes only once again.

This also made me realize that we have so many grapes this year... I ran out of bags quickly. I am looking forward to harvesting them, they were delicious last year. In addition to eating them fresh off the vine, I will grape juice with my steam juicer. I might also preserve some grape vines leaves for Ray to make dolma. I've been using them in my pickles too.