To put things in perpsective, I’m on vacation.The Chevy Chase kind.

At a gorgeous beach enjoying the many splendid fruits of the Shambaugh Victory Garden and it’s subsidiary Peppertown USA. I have been harvesting a lot of vegetables and herbs, wanted to share the food “pron”.

First, feast your eyes on the first pepper harvest:

This is a decent amount of action, akin to backseat groping, but is only a harbinger of things to come. Here’ the score. The jalapenos have been the fastest and the most prolific plants by far. I have 4 plants and was able to harvest around 50 peppers out of the gate. The largest of the plants has around 25 peppers on it at a time. The bell peppers are off to a slow start, but I picked a bunch of green ones to jump start production. Humans recommend that you pick the early fruits of a pepper plant in order to encourage more production. Bell Pepper plants produce around 3-4 peppers per plant at a time, and I have 10 plants. About to get funky with a capital P. I only have one Poblano plant, but it’s sprawling, halfway to a tomato plant, used a cage for support. The Cayenne peppers are just beginning to change color, not sure how long that process takes, but I think I’ll have around 30 peppers soon. The Cubanelle (sweet) are prolific, but not too large yet. And that red guy in that shiny silver pan is a Habanero. We have around 20 that are about ready to pop. I have 4 plants and it’s gonna be a bumper crop of napalm.

What to do with all of these peppers?

The first thing we did was follow a recent Gourmet recipe for Jalapeno Poppers.The fresh jalapenos from the garden are much hotter than store bought variety and not nearly as waxy. This is good eating - great with a beer on a hot summer day.

We made a quick tomato sauce using bell and jalapeno peppers. Perfect over linguine.

We harvested green beans and cooked them simply with shallots and garlic.

We spiced up my favorite potato recipe with jalapenos and pepper jack cheese. Added a great NY strip rubbed with a Montreal steak spice.

The heirloom tomatoes are pop-and-locking across 6 basil plants that have gone into hyperdrive.

Birch made an epic caprese salad this past weekend.

We made 10 batches of pesto - third no butter, third with butter, third with sundried tomato. Here’s the no butter, made especially chunky for a tuna steak cooked later that night.

To honor all of this great food courtesy of the Shambaugh Victory Garden, I built a new leaf compost enclosure to help fuel future efforts.

That’s my first installment. More summer vacation food porn to come…