Veggies, veggies, everywhere

Here are a couple shots from the veggie garden of 2009. It was a stellar year for salsa! There were 6 kinds of tomatoes and 4 kinds of hot peppers, with 2 mild peppers thrown in for good measure. I also had a great year with both Golden Squash and Eggplant. I planted regular old eggplant, Listada di Gandia eggplant - which were not only beautiful, but delicious for eggplant parmesan, Rosa Bianca eggplant - great for stirfry and mixed in veggie pasta dishes, and Japanese eggplant, good for grilling, frying, everything...yum!

Also included, but not photographed were okra, cucumbers, asparagus, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, artichokes (more on that later), and various lettuce greens. As a carnivore with vegetarian tendencies, this was the perfect garden. I had tomatoes that could rival the thickness and flavor of beef (kind of), eggplant for grilling, lettuce for salads, I was able to pickle my okra (not well, but I tried), and as I mentioned before, I salsa'd my entire circle of friends and family.

I made four salsas:

* Multi-colored chunky tomato salsa - delicious tastes of summer

* Serrano salsa - crazy spicy, but beautifully green

* Salsa Verde - I used green zebra tomatoes mixed with tomatillos, (courtesy of my lovely neighbors the Hitchcocks)

AND * Habanero salsa (more of a sauce) - made with hab's and carrots.

The habanero hot sauce was insane. I tried to mimic Marie Sharps, it was pretty delish but I want to try again this year. The Salsa Verde won the most votes, with a close second being the chunky multi colored salsa.

FYI: I had Purple Cherokee, Yellow Pear, Green Zebra, Italian Heirloom, Brandywine and 2 x Cherry tomatoes last year. The pepper varieties were Serrano, Chili peppers (which I dried and crushed), Jalapeno, Habanero, Gypsy and deep purple bell's. I had problems with the bell peppers last year, they grew very slowly and didn't produce very much. But the rest gave off bumper crops!!