My mom's small, but shockingly prolific garden, just keeps pumping out the peppers and tomatoes. She brings them by in bags, and within an hour of picking they are washed, chopped, and squirreled away in my deep freeze, just waiting for a mid-winter day when I will toss them, along with an onion and some beef strips and seasonings into the crock pot for some excellent, fast, inexpensive, and super-nourishing tortilla filling.
Let's focus for a moment on the fiscal rewards of stashing away some peppers:
I may have mentioned this before, but the price of peppers swings wildly according to seasonality, (like everything else...). Red and yellow and orange peppers were $1. each at the farmers market on Wednesday, but today I bought them bagged at the farmers market, and they averaged .72 each. At the store today they are $2. each.
I bought 33 red and yellow peppers at the farmers market today, and paid $24. If I had bought them at the grocery store today it would have cost me $66.00! In the winter time I see them go up to $2.50 each at the grocery store, so if I had to buy these peppers over the course of this winter I would end up paying a whopping $82.50!!!
The way I see it, by buying and freezing these now, instead of nickel-and-diming them one at a time all winter I just saved/earned $58.50. That's 58 bucks we did not have to earn; and completely tax-free, baby.
So, consider the ways you will use peppers this winter: fajitas? (Yes, weekly, either chicken or beef, in the crock pot, at my house...how about yours?) Soups? Stews? Breakfast scrambles and Christmas morning breakfast casserole?
Now, I pretty much always like my peppers chopped, in bite-size chunks, no matter what I am putting them in, but maybe you prefer strips, for fajitas or stir fry dishes. Decide how you will use them, and how often you will use them, then wash and chop accordingly.
Peppers have got to be one of the easiest things on earth to preserve, if you have a bit of freezer space. One recommended technique is to simply wash, dry, chop, freeze in a single layer on a cookie sheet (I use parchement to line the sheet), then bag and label. ( Here is a link to these simple instructions from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. )
I actually just put the chopped peppers into freezer bags and freeze them flat. That's pretty much it. No pre-treatment, no blanching. Just a basic chop, and freeze.
One thing I've started doing is using a NEW, dedicated to veggie-cleaning only(!) toothbrush to clean the tops of peppers, near the stem where dirt likes to hide in all those little grooves. I wasn't able to get at it with a regular veggie cleaning brush because it was too big, and found that a toothbrush was just the right size.
The lady I buy my peppers from at the market recommended freezing some whole for stuffed peppers, which I thought was a great idea, so I did some like that too. Just wash, dry, remove the tops and any seeds/white membranous stuff inside, and freeze.
When you buy peppers at the market (or get them from a gardeningly talented mom or friend, or grow them yourself!) they are still SO full of life. Full of sunshine! They have ripened perfectly on the vine in the sun, for full development of nutrients. Unlike peppers you find in the store that were picked long before they were fully ripe, and shipped long distances (probably exposed to heat in their long travels). Those factors, combined with the simple ticking of the clock since they were picked, makes for a big reduction in nutrients.
There's a handy little book, a classic work I refer to again and again, called Putting Food By, by Janet Greene, Ruth Hertzberg, and Beatrice Vaughan. This convenient guide gives me a quick run-down on the basic procedures of drying, freezing or canning just about anything. A quick Google for university extension publications works too.
Something about putting some summer food away for later is just comforting to me, very warm and fulfilling. There's some sort of strong instinct, way back in my brain, that makes me want to start stashing nutrients at this time of year, to nourish my family when it's dark and cold. I feel it coming. The days are getting shorter. And it always triggers a sense of urgency in me. No matter what, I'll be there, at the farmers market, getting whatever I can until the last squash is sold, because winter is long. And the first tiny leaves of spring are a long way off.
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