CSA Box Ideas: Peppers!

I don’t know about you, but we have gotten a TON of peppers lately – green, red, hot, sweet, short, long, and so on! There is no way that our family of four could possibly eat the number of peppers we get each week, so I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with them.

Did you know that you can freeze peppers? Yes! So, it’s really simple. Put aside the number of peppers you think your family can eat when your box arrives, and quickly freeze the rest. From what I’ve read online, you can freeze a pepper any way you like. No need to blanch or cook. Just rinse and cut how you think you’ll use it. I’ve frozen a dozen or so green peppers just cut in half so we can do stuffed peppers this winter. I’ve frozen several bags of diced green peppers as well as some bags of longer slices. You can also freeze those jalepenos whole and used them during the winter. We get 6 or so jalepenos in our box and can probably only eat one or two, so the rest go directly to the freezer.

It only took me a few minutes to fill all the bags in this picture because there is no cooking involved. I actually ordered extra green peppers in my box last week so that I could freeze them. My farmers can get them to me (picked that morning with minimal pesticides used) for $0.50 per pepper. When you go to Harris Teeter and need a few peppers for a pizza or stir fry they will set you back $2-$4 PER PEPPER! And they were grown in some south American country, picked weeks ago, ripened on a truck and who knows what kind of chemicals were sprayed on them.

For those peppers you don’t freeze, just get creative! We have been putting them in all sorts of dishes. Brett made a vegetarian lasagna a few weeks ago and just used whatever we had in the fridge: green peppers, corn, onions, zucchini. I gave him a funny look when he told me what was going in it: corn? And green peppers? In lasagna? What? But, seriously, it was one of the best lasagnas I have ever eaten.

Tonight we are sautéing green peppers and onions along with Italian sausage and serving them over parmesean grits! So good and so simple. And it will make 2 or 3 of your green peppers disappear.

Bon appetit!