In November, before the first frost hit us,
Mom decided we should pick all the peppers and tomatoes we could from her beautiful garden.
She has a beautiful garden, and I didn't realize how many she was talking about until I went to help her pick!
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| One of many trays... |
There must have been four large baskets of tomatoes and probably two full trays like this. As for peppers we couldn't even pick them all- habaneros, hot Chinese, jalapenos, and more.
We scoured the internet for recipes for green tomatoes and peppers, and ended up mostly just winging it anyway...
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| Pickled (Dill) Green Tomatoes! |
For the pickles we just followed a basic pickle formula (with regular vinegar, not cider) and then added fresh dill, some hot peppers, garlic, peppercorns and sliced green tomatoes then processed them.
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| Upside Down Pepperoncini! |
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She had enough banana peppers to make about five or six jars of pepperoncini (our fave.) We just pickled these too (with no dill.)
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| Green Tomato Salsa! |
We had so many tomatoes left over and wanted to make a salsa of some kind. Our favorite salsa is Herdez Tomatillo/Green salsa and we thought, "Why not make a green tomato salsa?" We only made about three jars of this and it came out so yummy! Basically it was chopped green tomatoes, jalapenos, chopped onion and garlic, cilantro, a bit of cumin and salt, some lime juice and touch of vinegar and then we cooked it. I should have written the recipe down!
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| Our Green Bounty |
Our next day we made THE HOTTEST pepper jelly from basically all habanero (aji chombo) peppers and a few jalapenos and Cayenne peppers. We had to cook it outside on the grill because it was so hot, then processed it inside. It came out a beautiful golden color with red and green flecks. I just used the pepper jelly recipe on the pectin package. I swear it's the hottest goodness you have ever tasted.
Mom still had a ton of peppers at her house so she made aji chombo sauce (Panamanian hot sauce) basically just aji chombo (habanero) peppers chopped up, vinegar, mustard, chopped garlic, chopped onion, and salt and pepper put into a bottle to sit in the fridge. Very, very, hot so be wary.
