Day 3 -Using what you have...

Unfortunately our garden this year has had a ton of peppers and not so many tomatoes from our many, many tomato plants.  All of my big plans of canning quarts and quarts of salsa are not coming to fruition, so we've been making small batches of fresh salsa and eating the tomatoes as we go.  Luckily we've had enough tomatoes for eating fresh on salad and for sandwiches, though.  The only problem is we are going to have a log of green tomatoes left at the end of the season, so I'm collecting some recipes to use them up in. 

Dilly Pickled Green Tomatoes 

Green Tomato Relish

Green Tomato Salsa

Green Tomato Cake

Green Tomato Raspberry Jam

Dehydrated Tomatoes (wondering if it would work with green tomatoes and how they'd taste?)

And, 

25 Green Tomato Recipes

Now, here is my super easy fresh salsa recipe:

Pico De Gallo from the Garden

4 cups roughly chopped tomatoes 
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small bunch cilantro
1 jalapeno, seeded and roughly chopped
1 anaheim pepper, seeded and roughly chopped
juice of one lime
salt to taste

Put all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor with blade and process until the desired consistency.  I usually mince the garlic with a garlic press ahead of time so there aren't any big chunks of garlic.  Also, adjust the amount of peppers to taste; use less for less kick!

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Besides green tomatoes, the most prolific growers in our garden are peppers.  We have California Beauties, Jalapenos and Anaheims.  I was wasting time on Pinterest today and saw this recipe for chicken and mushrrom stuffed peppers and this one for orzo stuffed peppers and was inspired to make up some of my own stuffed peppers that are nothing like the those two recipes.  

Garden Stuffed Green Peppers

I started with:

6 fresh-picked green peppers, cut in half length-wise with the seeds and ribs cleaned out.  

For the filling I sauteed:
1 medium eggplant,diced
1 small onion

Then added:
1 can of corn
1/2 of a 26.5 oz can of pasta sauce 
1 cup of leftover rice
1 small handful of fresh basil, sliced (use 1 tsp. of dried if no fresh)

Then cooked until heated through.  I used a cookie scoop to fill the pepper halves, which took 2 scoops for each half.  Then I baked them in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes or until they looked nice and done.  A dusting of Parmesan topped them off!

So, this was a matter of using what I had on hand.  

*From the garden: a glut of peppers, an eggplant and basil.

*Leftovers from the fridge:  Rice from dinner on Sunday night

*From the pantry:  corn (which I used for filler since I didn't have much rice left) pasta sauce that I always have on hand, and Parmesan cheese.

*That leaves the onion, which sits in a bowl on my counter.  

Dinner was easy and made with things on hand.  Not too shabby.

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Check back tomorrow when I'll be contemplating how to store water in case of contamination, no electricity, or other emergency.   For Day 1 (and links to the rest of the days) go here!


I'm also linking here:  DIY Accomplished