Slice the peppers, place on a cookie sheet and freeze. When frozen, move peppers to a plastic bag and return to the freezer. Nothing could be easier. © Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp
The last gasps of the growing season yield an onslaught of tomatoes and peppers and these are vegetables that don’t keep very well without some type of preservation.
After reading Minnesota garden writer Rhonda Fleming Hayes‘ column a few weeks ago, I decided to freeze them. Easy peasy.
Frozen pepper slices ready for the freezer. (C) Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp
I placed slices of peppers and tomatoes on a cookie sheet and put it in the freezer. Once frozen, I slide the slices off of the cookie sheet into plastic bags put them in the freezer. The frozen peppers and tomatoes can be used in chili, soup and sauces.
For more information about preserving your food at home, check out Purdue Extension’s programs, http://bit.ly/1vovIHl
If you don’t want to mess with freezing, canning or dehydrating your vegetables, you can share your bounty with soup kitchens and food pantries around the city and state. Here are a few:
- Society of St. Vincent dePaul, www.svdpindy.org
- Gleaners Food Bank, www.gleaners.org
- Second Helpings, http://www.secondhelpings.org
- Julian Center Food Pantry, http://bit.ly/1xtGJJD
- Feeding America, http://bit.ly/1pBG0gt
- Food Pantries, www.foodpantries.org/ci/in-indianapolis.
They’re Back!
The Rescue stink bug trap works, but it won’t catch all of these Asian invaders, which want to get into your house.
The brown marmorated stink bugs are back at this this year, working diligently to get into our homes. This is the second year these Asian imports have shown up in significant numbers in Indiana. They are brown bugs, about the size of a dime. They look like shields with legs and emit a cilantro-like smell when threatened or killed.
“I can’t tell you how many I’ve had in the house since last summer,” Julie Iverson, a Marion County Master Gardener, posted on Facebook. “One scared the living daylights out of me when I was reading in bed the other night. Yikes!”
On Sept. 20, I installed a Rescue brand trap, which works on pheromones to attract the sinkers. The trap covers draws from a 30-foot area. Normally, I’m not very enthused about traps, such as for Japanese beetles, because they are so effective. But bug experts I’ve talked to say the stink bug trap is slightly better because it pulls from a smaller area. Hopefully, it will get the bugs in your yard and not pull them in from the neighborhood. And though effective, the trap will never catch all of the stink bugs. I hate to think how many make it into my house. A while back, there were two sitting on the button to turn on my radio.