It's vacation week and was Bountiful Basket weekend

It's spring break and Saturday was a Bountiful Basket Saturday. Yay!

I had lots of peppers. I'd bought a reduced package of tiny sweet red and orange peppers. I also had all the Anaheim peppers left over from the Basket two weeks ago. I had one left over wrinkled green pepper from some era long before. And, in the Basket on Saturday were three large red peppers. So, I needed to use a lot of peppers, lol.

What to do? I roasted them. Then, I mulled. By Sunday morning I'd looked up recipes. It's not rocket science. I googled "How to use a lot of peppers." Literally. That's the kind of searches I do. I just ask, and google answers. I try not to think about the Orwellian implications of this.

I found a recipe for a pepper tart. I often make quiche and I'd thought briefly about a pepper and cheese quiche. But I only had four eggs left and I didn't want to use them all. The tart called for 1 full egg and 1 yolk. Of course the tart comes out thinner but that was OK, quiche is heavy anyway. I liked the fact that it used fewer eggs, no flour and only cooks in the oven for 15 minutes. The oven (and the dryer) takes so much electricity I can tell by the monthly bill when I've cooked a lot. I had feta cheese on hand so I topped the tart with that.

It came out great! I only had a deep dish pie shell on hand but next time I'll get a shallow pie shell or phyllo dough for a real tart.

You see how the tart definitely doesn't need a deep dish

It's thin, but I like that. The flavor of the peppers is more prominent

Now the other problem: I had 6 pears left but they were weird. I'd eaten one the day before at school for my lunch, but it was hard even though it looked soft. As a matter of fact half of one pear was rotten in my bowl, but the rest were still hard. It was one of those situations where they'd never soften up, so I'd need to cook them. Throwing them out was out of the question. I don't waste.

Voila, pear sauce. I simply peeled and chopped them, put them in boiling water and cooked until they were soft. I blended them with ginger and cinnamon, lemon juice and just a tablespoon of sugar. You can see it filled a large Ball Mason jar. (I've already had one helping. It used to be filled to the top. ;)

Of course I never turn the oven on unless I can stuff it. This saves electricity. The costliest items in the home for electricity are the air conditioner, the dryer and the oven. So when the oven is on, it's working to cook several dishes, not just one. Using all the food you have with a minimum of extra ingredients saves money too.

Here is the photo of the Bountiful Basket and all that was in it. The photo is from our local co-op Facebook page.

I ate the strawberries right away. I roasted the carrots whole. The cauliflower will be roasted next weekend. I've already eaten some of the bananas and apples. I roasted the peppers as mentioned. Below was my Sunday Brunch after church. The potatoes were from the last Bountiful Basket two weeks ago.

Not everything was a success. The carrots came with tops. They were two feet long and green. I love anything green so I looked up recipes for how to use carrot tops. Yes they're edible, and I set about to make carrot top pesto. I stripped the leaves from the top so I wouldn't have the hard thin stems to deal with and put the leaves in boiling water to blanch them, in order to soften them up. I don't have a hand blender so I put them in the regular blender with lemon juice and olive oil. There wasn't enough bulk to blend and the whole thing ended up being a propeller-stalling stringy mess with splattered olive oil up the sides of the blender. And the carrot tops didn't taste good anyway.

Well, I tried not to waste anything. Maybe next time I'll roast the tops...

Today is 78 degrees and tomorrow and the next day are predicted to the the same. I have plans to have breakfast with some gals on Thursday morning and another date with a different gal friend later in the week. It's all good.