Harvest Monday - 1 November 2021

Our first true frost greeted me on Friday morning, where the temperature was just below freezing. This was actually not forecast in my area. But somehow I had a premonition on Thursday, and picked all the remaining tomatoes and peppers.

First the tomatoes. I took all that I deemed had a chance of ripening indoors. Not that we really need them, but I hate to leave things unharvested.

Last tomato harvest

Then the sweet peppers. These were chopped and put in the freezer without blanching. We've found they keep very well, and are very useful.

Last sweet pepper harvest

Then a mess of hot peppers, including jalapeno, cayenne, Hot Lemon, and Sugar Rush Cream.

Last hot pepper harvest

I cut up all of them and made a hot sauce. I included all the garlic scapes we had in the fridge since June, still pretty good. Since it was a mess of peppers, I called it "Hot Mess Sauce." It certainly exceeded my expectations...a dozen five ounce "Woozy" bottles (how they got that name I have no idea). Here they are along with the other sauces I made this year. This is way more than we can use, so we will fob some off on unsuspecting victims friends and relatives.

Unfermented hot sauces

This year The Kitchen Goddess bought a bunch of sweet potato slips and planted them in the community garden as usual. But there was one she rejected as being too weak looking. It sat around in the barn, forlorn and unloved, for a couple of weeks. Finally I thought "why not?" and planted it in the home garden. I was surprised at the result when I dug it up this week. Not much, but I'm proud of it! First time growing them at home.

Georgia Jet sweet potatoes

I cut two of the remaining stalks of collards and stripped off the greens. Yes, they are kind of hole-y, but it doesn't matter to us after they've been cut up.

Top Bunch 2.0 collards

There were more nice raspberry harvests this week.

Fall raspberries

Sue Martin, a regular contributor to Harvest Monday with her delightful blog, asked me last week what we do with all these raspberries. Most of them go into the freezer for use in smoothies. But TKG also makes a very tasty (and potent) raspberry liqueur. It's basically a tincture, with cheap red wine, cheap bourbon, and cheap Marsala (emphasis on cheap). Also the zest of a lemon. Here's what it looks like when it's soaking in a quart jar.

Raspberry liqueur in the making

Finally, I took a trip to the cellar and brought up the last of the spaghetti squash. It's amazing to me that it has held up this nicely for a full year. One went into a putanesca using some of the sauce I also brought up, 2020's as well.

Squash and tomato sauce from the stores

More frosts are on the way, so only a few more posts will follow. Stop that cheering! Thanks for reading, and thanks again to the amazing Dave at HappyAcres.blog for hosting Harvest Monday.