Figured I’d finally get some harvesting posts up since I couldn’t find the time to do it “live”.  As we get loads of green peppers, what I don’t eat raw (my favorite), we chop and freeze.  When we have large batches at once, after washing & removing the stem/seeds, we send chunks through the chopper blade of our food processor.  We freeze them in 2 cup and 4 cup freezer bags.

We have a stuffed pepper soup recipe that calls for 4 cups of chopped peppers, and we use 2 cups in our chili recipe – hence storing those sizes.  I think last year we froze enough that we could make 8 batches of our soup and another 8 batches of our chili.  We also like to make a bunch of barley-stuffed peppers which we freeze individually so we can just take out what we want.  I place them side-by-side in a covered container until fully frozen, and then stack them in gallon sized freezer bags.

That’s pretty much how we calculate what we need for a year… When it’s time to cook, I like to grab what I need in the size that I need – kinda like our very own grocery store, lol! It really works great for the type of lifestyle we live. Ideally, someday we’d like to use less plastic, but we are not there yet.  For now, being able to create a filling meal in a shorter amount of time is a higher priority. 🙂

Many of our hot peppers, we just wash & freeze whole.  We like to throw a couple whole peppers into pots of “whatever”, just for flavor. We’ve learned to taste test while recipes simmer – because it doesn’t take too long for the “heat” to take over, lol…

Every year, my 3 boys try to make their own hot sauce.  Found a recipe for a lacto-fermented hot sauce online, so they tried it last season.  They sorted their peppers by “hotness” and made 3 different batches.  They are still undecided if they really like it or not…(which in my opinion, means they must not like it, lol)

We froze the hot sauce in half pint jars, but didn’t have enough lids for them.  Used foil & set them into sandwhich ziplock baggies in an effort to NOT stink up our freezer, but that didn’t work.  Next season, we will have metal lids, lol. 🙂