Pepper plenty

| Green Card Gardener

It is as if the peppers are trying to make up for the poor zucchini and cucumber harvest this year. As always, I start cutting off all bell pepper blossoms in early August so the plants put their energy into the peppers that are already there, and I don’t end up with oodles of tiny green peppers at the onset of frost in October.

A bumper crop of bell peppers is not a problem – I freeze them and use them all winter long for various dishes and my Red Pepper Spread. But what to do with all those jalapeños from one single plant? After I used them for salsa, and froze and dried some (they are not turning red as expected), I was running out of ideas, especially since my husband does not like hot foods. Then I found a fabulous recipe for Bread and Butter Jalapeños. After I tried the first bite I instantly regretted that I had only made half the recipe. They were gone in a few days. I even ate some straight out of the jar, something I usually never do. Now I am collecting all the jalapeños for canning a large batch.

Yesterday I felt a slight disappointment rising when there was only a handful of jalapeños, and was reassured seeing plenty of more growing. Interesting how one great recipe can make you change your perspective.

Cooking in bed

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This is not what you might think. It is a simple and ingenious trick to cook the creamiest rice pudding. I learned it from my aunt on my last trip to Germany.

Rice pudding was one of my staple dishes as a student. It was cheap and filling, and I usually ate it the way it is often eaten in Germany: warm, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, and with peaches from the can. Getting it right is not so easy though. Like risotto, cooking rice pudding needs close attention so it does not scorch, and it often ends up too dry so you have to stir in additional milk after cooking, and more milk after the rice pudding cools and stiffens.

Not so in my aunt’s rice pudding. Actually it is not her invention but the way farmers’ wives did it. The rice is added to the boiling milk, cooked only briefly and then the pot is tucked in under a duvet or comforter and left for at least one hour. When you open the pot, all the milk is on top and you initially think it is a complete failure. But then you stir it and all the milk gets absorbed. The rice pudding stays nicely creamy even after chilling – no need to add any milk later.

Last week our daughter was home with a toothache. That and the delicious and juicy peaches from the local orchard (no more canned peaches for me) just called for rice pudding!

I fetched a duvet from its summer storage and made sure that the bedroom door was closed so the dog would not break into the makeshift cooker and for sure singe his nose – the pot was piping hot when I took it out. The rice pudding was so yummy that we gobbled up a large batch of it, and I made some more today. Nowadays I prefer rice pudding chilled, especially in the summer.

I think it’s not worth putting the duvet back in storage.

The recipe can be found in my cookbook Spoonfuls of Germany.

Round and lonely survivors

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Calamities are part of gardening reality but I still cannot get used to it, and probably never will. Last year there were no eggplants due to flea beetles. This year, several dozen cucumber, summer squash and melon seedlings died on me, either chewed into oblivion by the striped cucumber beetle, or killed later by the bacterial wilt that the beetles transmit. The latest victim to the disease were the Hubbard squashes, which had grown as tall as the fence and just started to set fruit. I pulled the entire patch last week. Don’t mention it. Two cucumber plants are just hanging in there. I am trying not to get my hopes up too high for cucumber salad.

None of the gardeners I spoke to around here seems to have the same troubles. Driving by a pumpkin patch yesterday and seeing that field of healthy verdure made me jealous. Yet I should not forget that unlike many other parts of the country, we had plenty of rain here in northeast Pennsylvania. We are very fortunate; there could be many more failed crops.

And, there is a consolation prize in my garden! A friend of a friend had given me two plants of Tondo di Piacenza, an Italian heirloom zucchini. Although the beetles are populating them as well, the plants seem to be resistant (so far) and I am picking one or two beautiful round zucchini every other day. They are great for stuffing but now that I have more than just a couple, I can finally make my Zucchini Quiche with Goat Feta that I have been craving all summer.

Maybe I will switch to growing Tondo di Piacenza next year. But next year there might be no trouble with striped cucumber beetles, and some other calamity will hit a different crop. You never know.

Bark bag

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As much as I like my vegetable garden to be neat and tidy, and as fiercely as I fight unwanted visitors there, I can also let things go and tremendously enjoy the areas where nature takes its course: the meadows where turkeys like to nest, white from Queen Anne’s lace right now, a hillside filled with Staghorn sumac and pokeweed for bird food, and, of course, patches of milkweed for monarchs.

We gave up on growing fruit trees a long time ago because deer were running them over or devouring them. The only survivors are two pear trees. In the last few years, some animal, most likely a groundhog, was faster than us and picked the loaded trees clean just when the pears were starting to ripen. This year we decided to take action and try to keep the critters away with Epsom salt and Plantskydd, a deterrent that has worked well so far.

On my pear protection mission today I found a bunch of pears on the ground that the wind must have knocked down. Before I could lose myself in fantasies about what to make with them, I had to find a way to bring them back to the house. It was sweltering hot and I had no intention to walk up to the house to get a basket or a bag. For a brief moment I considered taking off my T-shirt to carry the pears but the idea of bugs eating me alive made me discard that idea quickly. When I looked around at the edge of the woods for some suitable receptacle such as giant leaves, I found a large piece of bark – perfect for the purpose.

The pears will go into my favorite Spiced Chocolate Pear Cake.