End-of-season Peppers

Earlier this week, we finally pulled the last of the pepper plants after nursing them along, covering them at night, and giving them a few more days, a few more days to finish their ripening.

Normally you would not see a green pepper in our kitchen. The ubiquitous green bell pepper found on salad bars, on top of pizzas, and in supermarkets everywhere across this great land is simply an unripe yellow, orange, or red pepper. I find green peppers unappetizing, and they are hard for our bodies digest (especially raw), but nonetheless green bell peppers seem to be consumed like they're going out of style. I have heard that the only reason the green bell pepper is part of the modern American diet at all is that it is easier to transport and less perishable when it is unripe than when it matures to yellow, orange, or red.

In any case, since the lows were fixing to be in the 20s, we gave up waiting and brought all of the remaining peppers in from the garden to ripen. The big, luscious yellow peppers that you see in the photo are the variety Corno di Toro Giallo, an Italian heirloom that was our heaviest-producing pepper this year. Orchid Peppers, the red crumpled-looking peppers that you can see in the upper left corner of the photo, were the most ornamental of the peppers we grew this year, with the Purple Cayenne coming in a close second. Other peppers in the mix pictured here include Golden Treasure, Red Cheese (pimento), Hotwax, Romanian, Jimmy Nardello, and Pacia Bajio (which ripen to a dark brown). You can buy seeds for all of these heirloom varieties from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.