Horticultural Takeover

The rabid jungle expanse that I refer to as le jardin, continues it's inevitable domination of my tiny backyard. The black krim, old German, and marglobe tomato plants have been staked up to the very top edge of the fence, and are planning their escape down the backside and out into the alley. I'm guessing its only a matter of time before I go out there one morning, and having failed to show up for work, my coworkers find me tangled in a viney web with a tomato stuffed in my mouth...

In other news, my tomatillo plant finally produced some fruit--tiny, yellow tomatillos that I assumed would be green until I took a second look at the tag in the pot: "Dr. Wyche's Yellow." Oh. So they're NOT supposed to be green. Due to poor planning/failure to do appropriate research, I planted the tomatillo in too small a pot, which resulted in an explosions of flowers through early August, but culminated in only about 20 or so slightly-smaller-than-a-ping-pong-ball size fruits....not exactly enough to jar a bunch of salsa verde. Boo.

Instead, I removed the paper husks, washed them, and sliced them, then threw them on a cookie sheet with some sliced jalapenos (check out one of my two very prolific plants below), garlic cloves, and a yellow pepper. They went into a 500 degree oven for about 20 minutes or so, then into the food processor for a quick pulse. The resulting chunky "salsa" I froze in an ice cube tray, then popped out the pellets and vacuumed sealed them for use in a future salsa, stew, or chili.
And speaking of vacuum sealing, my completely awesome mom bought me a FoodSaver the other day. If you are at all like me (or maybe even a little more normal and plant your garden/buy a CSA with some restraint), I highly recommend picking one up. (It is so choice...) I spent the evening I brought it home resealing all my frozen CSA fruit, as well as some pepper pellets I'd made previously. Now, my fears of freezer burns on all my goodies is alleviated, and my freezer looks like I'm preparing for some sort of apocalyptic food shortage. Yay!

I'll leave you all with some parting shots of the Bradley Pink and Old German tomato plants, just because I can.