Monday, March 25, 2013

King Harvest has surely come



This is but a sample of the recent output from my capsicum plants. Despite (because of?) the drought, it’s my best-ever harvest ever: loadsa capsica and they are massive. The longest is 17 centimetres (see the ruler), several are 15 centimetres (see the Iris DeMent CD included for size comparison) and that’s not because they are pumped full of water and stuff like the ginormous vegetables you see in a US supermarket. The only performance-enhancing drug they have taken is fund-raising worm wee from the children’s school. Tomorrow afternoon I shall make red-pepper jelly.

Elsewhere in the garden there are passionfruit (wonderful), blueberries (pretty good), grapes (totally unsatisfactory), raspberries (awesome), chillies (can’t go wrong with Serrano and bird’s-eye) plus the usual staples. My wife was for once impressed when I made her lunch yesterday, spring rolls with Vietnamese mint and Thai basil from the garden. Home-made nuoc cham, obviously.

So here is the Band in Tokyo in 1983 with “King Harvest (has surely come)” from their second album, austerely titled The Band. No Robbie Robertson – this is the later version of the band with the Cate Brothers (that’s Earl Cate on guitar).  There is a great DVD of this incarnation, The Band is Back, recorded in Vancouver that year. Richard Manuel, lead vocals on this song, hanged himself three years later. He was only 42.


4 comments:

Stephanie said...

You got me at red pepper jelly: will you share your recipe???? Please, pretty please?

Stephen Stratford said...

Here you go: the recipe calls for seven large peppers but I needed only three and a half of these monsters.

Red Pepper Jelly

7 large peppers
1 cup water
3 chillies
1 pkt setting mix for jam (70g)
1.5 cups cider vinegar
5 cups sugar

Remove seeds and stems from peppers abd chillies. Chop and whiz to pulp.
Measure to 3 cups and put into large pot.
Mix setting mix with water and add to pot with vinegar. Bring to boil and simmer quietly, stirring frequently, for 8 minutes
Add sugar and bring back to boil. Boil hard until setting point (may need to boil for 45-60 minutes).
Put in sterile jars.
Makes approx 8 small jars.

Stephanie said...

Many thanks, will try it this coming weekend.

Kate said...

Well done that man. I got good tomatoes and rhubarb but not much else this year. Even the silverbeet was sad. Perhaps my bath water doesn't agree with it. Heh.