Hot Pepper Harvest and a Spicy Stew
A few of our lovely homegrown peppers
This weekend we did a lot of weeding in the brutal heat and sun. Sometimes I feel sorry for Rob because this is what I like to do on the weekend; I like to labor. And so he must labor too. On Saturday we weeded and mowed the grass and took small breaks for limeade and Winn-Dixie Italian ices, which we consumed on the floor of the sun room among our many cats. It was so hot, it was “stupid hot,” as I once heard a technician at Super Lube say one August day.
The best part of weeding was admiring the wildflowers in bloom all around me: delicate purple ironweed, yellow cutleaf coneflowers, Turk’s caps, woodland sunflowers, and rosinweed (with flowers like happy faces). . . . The meadow and borders are mostly yellow now; August is the month of yellow flowers.
In the garden, the hot peppers are really starting to kick, and our poor scraggly old tomato plants are still producing like crazy even though they look so worn out. On Saturday morning we picked a bunch of tomatoes and made fresh salsa with lime and green onions and our own homegrown garlic, cilantro, and hot peppers. The hot peppers are so pretty; they look like candy–sour balls and such. They’re bright red and orange and so wonderfully shiny. We’re growing jalapenos, habaneros, cayennes, clown peppers, Tabasco, and Thai Dragons.
Rob thought the salsa was the best he’s ever made. “The key is a little lime, but not too much,” he said, bragging. “See? I only used half this lime.”
We ate mostly salsa for lunch on Saturday. And then that night we cooked up a lentil stew based on this recipe. We changed the recipe kind of a lot, so we could use up as many tomatoes as possible, so I’ve typed up our version down below. Even though we used pounds of tomatoes in the stew, our refrigerator is still overflowing with them, and the counters are covered, and the cats are rolling them around on the floor like balls. There are tomatoes everywhere–and still more to pick.
Lentil stew with a basil garnish. Basil is so awesome, in my opinion. It’s pretty and tasty and it’s great in a pollinator garden; ours is always covered with butterflies and bees and interesting wasps.
