“A Bushel and a Peck” is a song written in 1950 for the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls. It was later made popular by Doris Day, The Andrew Sisters, and Perry Como, to name a few. It was most recently included in the soundtrack of the movie, Julie & Julia. If you’re not familiar with the tune, check it out HERE. Just don’t blame me if you aren’t able to get the snappy melody out of your head.

What is a bushel and how much is a peck? Both are very old English units of measuring volume.  A bushel is a British imperial capacity measure for liquid or dry and is 2152.42 cubic inches. If that makes no sense to you, join the club. A bushel of potatoes would weigh 60 pounds, a bushel of oats comes in at 32 pounds, and barley weighs 48 pounds.

A peck is 1/4 of a bushel. In a dry measure, it is 8 quarts. So when Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, exactly how many peppers did Peter Piper pick? It would depend on the type of pepper, so the answer would be somewhere between 10 to 14 pounds.

Green beans, banana peppers, corn, watermelon, lemon cucumbers, Anaheim peppers, tomatoes, bell peppers, and potatoes from Crooked Sky Farms

When I picked up my CSA weekly allotment from Crooked Sky Farms this past Thursday, there looked to be about a peck of peppers. Now generally when I get this many peppers, I just fire up the grill and roast them off, but my freezer is already full of roasted peppers from the summer’s bounty. Upon further examination, there turned out to be a mixed 3 1/2 pounds of bell, Anaheim, and banana peppers. Not exactly a peck, but still a bunch!  And here is what I decided to do with them.

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