A Busy Tuesday Night....

Last night was busy busy busy! After a long and wonderful holiday weekend I was back home last night and our kitchen (and fridge especially) was looking neglected. After three hours of hard work of washing, peeling, chopping, freezing and cleaning up things started to feel like they were back in order.

Although the garden has been struggling due to this summer's heat and lack of rain it keeps producing and I keep harvesting. After a picnic on Monday I made another harvest to bring home and upon washing and going to put everything away I quickly realized we were not eating up our produce fast enough - as I found some bad tomatoes and eggplant in the fridge. :(

So rather than let the remainder of what we had gathered go bad I began chopping and freezing! Although I enjoyed canning tomatoes the other week - the process was long and I didn't have enough tomatoes to work with this time around so into the freezer they went - yellow pear and cherry tomatoes!

Did you know you can freeze whole tomatoes? Even big boys and beef steak can be frozen whole (although they may fit in the freezer better if halved or quartered). Tomatoes freeze well, although when thawed they do not keep their crispness so you will not be able to slice them up for a sandwich, but they do retain their flavor and are perfect for cooking up in sauces and fall/winter stews!

I blanched and froze the rest of the lima beans and also managed to deseed and chop up about 50 jalapeno peppers. I remembered to wear gloves this time so my fingers stayed in tact!

Our jalapeno plants are producing like crazy and they are spicier than ever this year! I read somewhere that the more you stress a hot pepper plant the spicier the peppers it produces will be. I saved a few from our most recent harvest and whipped up some jalapeno poppers to have with dinner last night - needless to say our mouths were on fire!

There is still more veggies to be dealt with, but tonight is food shopping night so we'll see what kind of time I have left after I get home and get everything put away...it may have to get pushed off till tomorrow.