Harvest Monday - September 6, 2010

Instead of showing you my usual harvest I thought I'll share some of the sights from New Mexico Hatch Chile Festival.   Our chile harvest and roasting season runs from mid-August through September, you can smell chile roasting in the air wherever you go, New Mexicans load up their cars with sacks and sacks of chiles to stock up for the year.  To give you an idea of how serious we take chile roasting and how much we eat chiles in NM, some big box stores like Wal Mart runs 4 roasters in their store front, grocery stores in town offer free roasting service, churches do fund raising event this time of the year selling and roasting chiles.  Yes, we love our chiles, big time!

Hatch chiles come in different sizes and shapes, from sweet to super hot.

The village of Hatch is home to to the "world's best chile peppers". 

Admission to the event is $10 per carload.

Inside the building --- entertainments, crafts, demonstrations, foods, etc.

Mild, medium, hot, extra hot, extra extra hot chiles in 40 lb sacks.

This vendor is selling 3 different varieties of green chiles.

Varieties of red chiles.

Try a combo ristra when confusion kicks in. 

Checking out different varieties of chile.

Ristra making demonstration.

Here in NM we buy chile by the sack, each sack is 40 lbs,
notice the chile roaster behind the tent, the price of chiles includes
roasting and delivery to your car.

Every vendor has at least one roaster in service.

Hot dried peppers.

Red or green ground chile powder.

Yummy chicharron with hot salsa and lime, do you eat fried pork rind?
we enjoy eating greasy unhealthy foods once in a while,
(Who's counting fats and calories when you're having fun?)

There are some healthy real fruit juice too.

and something in between

Gimme one of those super hot pepper ristra.



Chile sauce without onion is nasty, we buy chiles by the sack
why not buy onions by the sack, they go well together.

Hand operate roaster is faster than automatic roaster, compare the width

 and diameter of this roaster with the automatic roaster below.

Automatic chile roaster takes a little longer to do the same job.

Chiles chiles, chiles everywhere, can you smell chiles roasting in the air?

Typical street scene as you drive through Hatch village.

A sack of green chiles is 40 lbs.

Roasting

Few minutes later, it's done, boxed, and delivered, all for $25 (this year).

Take a closer look --- all blistered and slightly charred, heavenly aroma.

Hard work begins at home, you have to peel the skin and remove seeds,
(for rellenos you just peel the skin), bag chiles in serving portion and freeze.
Hopefully one buys enough for the year, chiles imported from neighboring
states and Mexico don't taste the same and fall short of the unique aroma.
(No offense to our neighbors, we are mighty proud of our "designer" chiles.)

 
Visit Daphne's Dandelions host of Harvest Monday for more harvests.

Demo: How To Catch A Flying Insect

Click on the pictures for larger view

 

The tiny black dot in front of Junior is an insect, she got it!  

Yes, Junior is a girl, I finally learned how to ID hummers.

 

Papa Buzz showing off insect catching skill, 

it's hard to see the tiny tiny black dot on this photo,

but you can see his open beak.

Mama Zipp going after something something.

I'm com~~~~ing in~~~~

Mama Zipp

Wordless

Harvest Monday - August 30, 2010

Potatoes, figs, winter melon, radish, beets.

Yukon Gold Potatoes grown in a Smartpot, this tray is 9.8 lbs.

Here in NM when you order food from a Mexican or New Mexican restaurant you're ask "red or green?"  That means you have to choose either a green chile sauce or red chile sauce for your plate.  My favorite is green, what is yours? 

Despite late start the 3 winter melon plants produce 6 large melons plus some smaller ones, I'm picking the smaller melons and use them as summer squash.  These winter melons can grow to 40 lbs or more if left unpicked, but you can use it at any size, the immature fruits are more tender and do not store well.

The mature melons with white waxy coating can be store up to a year if uncut, once the melon is cut it must be consumed within a week or two, or else it will be spoiled.  You can see these large melons are beginning to mature and developing a white waxy coat from the stem end, I'll let them grow until October and harvest before frost.

Harvest for this week:

Tomatoes 14.4 lb

Paprikas 3.0 lb

Shishito 1.35 lb

Beans 1.39 lb

Beauty Heart Radish 1.29 lb

Eggplants (final) 2.63 lb

Ong Choy 2.10 lb

Michihili cabbage 2.4 lb

Cantaloupes 4.3 lb

Banana melon 5.3 lb

Bitter melons 7.80 lb

Figs 2.5 lb

Winter melon 3.10 lb
Potatoes 15.35 lb

Total for the week: 66.91

Visit Daphne's Dandelions host of Harvest Monday for more garden harvests.

Introducing Junior

 

This is Junior -- note the black mark on his/her gorget.

This is the 3rd hummer that hangs around my garden lately,

I believe he/she is an offspring of Buzz and Zipp because

he was not chased away from the feeder like other hummers were,

like his parents Junior is not afraid of me or my camera.

His favorite perch is the sesame plant cage.

Junior flew over my head and perched on the trellis,

I was about 2 feet away from him and snapped this picture.

Wordless

Double Rainbows

Harvest Monday - August 23, 2010

White and green bitter melons, Japanese cucumbers.

Eggplants and Swiss Chard

Bitter melons come in green and white, long or short, 

small and big, very bitter and not so bitter.  Some people loves

the bitterness and some people hate it, it's an acquired taste.

Click here to read more about it's culinary and medicinal use.

Overripe Bitter Melon, it is soft and mushy, it will burst

and crack open any time at this stage.  I tried to pick this one,

but it broke into pieces and dropped to the ground.

An inside look -- the best part of an overripe BM (top left)
 is its sweet red pulp enclosing the seeds, the flesh is too mushy
for my taste, but some people love it.  The ripening BM
(middle-lower) is fine to eat.

Immature bitter melons are the least bitter and very crunchy.

Bitter melon stir fry with beef in spicy black bean sauce.
I use 3 different colors of BM here because I have them on hand,
this classic dish is commonly serve with green bitter melon.

“Five Greens Smoothie" 五青湯

A well known Chinese healthy drink for diabetics
and to control cholesterol.  Some people drink
this concoction daily and swear by it.

Here are the ingredients that go into the drink:
Green bitter melon, green apple, green pepper,
green cucumber, and green celery.

My harvest in the last few days:

Tomatoes 22.9 lb

Filet beans 3.0 lb
Long beans 1.5 lb

Eggplants 4.2 lb

Swiss chard 1.0 lb

3 Cantaloupes 9.2 lb

1 Charentais melon 3.2 lb

3 Petit Gris melons 7.2 lb

2 Banana melons 7.5 lb

Cucumbers 1.0 lb

Bitter melons 6.8 lb

Total harvest for the week:  67.5 lb

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions, head over there to see more garden harvests.