October's Bounty

This morning, looking at our robust pepper plants bursting with bloom and loaded with fruit, I felt sorry for them. Peppers are subtropical plants. Peppers grow to be trees in their native habitat, but here a frost kills them dead. They don’t know that our average first frost date is just around the corner. Boy, are they going to be surprised.

Tomatoes, also, will go bye-bye, but they are in decline and would soon die anyway. Their life span is almost over. They probably won’t much care when the frost comes, sort of like old people who are a little tired of living.

Still there are plenty of Roma tomatoes to harvest. Dennis picked some today, and I harvested a few turnips, beets and peppers.

I grow turnips for their greens, not their roots. Turnip greens are bursting with calcium and a host of other nutrients. I like them for their taste. Supper tonight includes turnip and beet greens braised in olive oil and garlic.

The runty beets I gave to the chickens along with all the greens trimmings, but I couldn’t give them the turnips. Studying them, I remembered that I’ve been encountering the words “pickled turnips” lately. Cooked turnips have never appealed to me much, but pickles might be a different story. After consulting Internet recipes I opted for an oriental version that includes kombu, rice wine vinegar, sugar, and kosher salt.

This is a test. It is only a test. October’s bounty allows some gambling.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer