Notes on Gypsy Soup

It seems like time to start getting into the nitty-gritty. So I'm going to describe a recent dinner dish in some detail.

Recipe: Gypsy Soup, from the Moosewood Cookbook
Ingredients:

• garbanzo beans -- we buy these in bulk from Greenstar, replacing each jar as it runs out. They're organic, but they don't grow locally, so we don't know much about their provenance. We store them in half gallon mason jars, like most of our grains and beans, to keep the bugs out. A year's supply for our family is one to two jars; we keep two in stock.
• sweet potatoes -- we grow these in our garden and store them in a covered basket in a cool north-side room (ideally 50-60 degrees.) I organize a bulk buy of starts each spring, which makes them very cheap, and plant two dozen myself. This yields approximately a bushel -- 3/4 in a bad year, 1 1/4 in a boom year -- which lasts from harvest time in mid-October until sometime between late March and early May. They don't keep well after the weather warms up, so this is a seasonal winter food.
• celery -- in winter, I substitute celeriac, which can be stored for several months in a root cellar. My community has a shared root cellar, and a neighbor organizes an annual bulk buy from local farmers, which we refer to as a "Root CSA." This year I ordered 1/2 pound of celeriac per pickup (1 pound per month) for the winter months: a pretty small amount, but it seems adequate for us. 
• onions -- every year I try to grow these, but my yields are typically pretty poor. The Root CSA is my backup plan, and that's where the onion I used last night came from. I ordered one pound per pickup this year, and figured I would get another half to one pound from what I grew.
• garlic -- we grow 50 plants a year, store 40 and use 10 for re-planting. White and Red German have worked best for us.
• bell pepper - I grow these and freeze them. I wouldn't use them in a salad, but they work fine for cooked dishes. I'm still a little unclear on how much to grow and how much they yield and how much we use; I've only been doing them for a couple years. It's somewhere around 8 to 12 plants for freezing, and about as many more (mostly short-season heirloom varieties) for fresh eating. The official yield is about a half dozen peppers per plant, which is pretty close to what we get.
• tomatoes -- I planted eight paste tomato plants the last couple years, and canned about 30-40 pints. That's not including what we ate fresh. We're not Italian, so this is easily a year's supply (after experiencing the labor of processing eight plants, I about died last fall when I read that Barbara Kingsolver plants 50.) The canning instructions call for 45 minutes of processing, which strikes me as excessive, so instead I cook them just long enough to soften them and then freeze them. Less secure if the power goes out, but much less heat-intensive (and in August, no less.) I imagine that if we do some day have an emergency without power, I can process them after-the-fact on Greg's wood stove. Hopefully in the winter.
• herbs & spices -- The basil was home-grown; the rest came either from Greenstar or one of Greg's ultra-cheap bulk buys. I have had mixed results with basil. For a couple years now I've tried interplanting it with the tomatoes, which is recommended for tomato pest control, but the basil seems to be a lot happier growing by itself at the end of the row. I'll probably switch back to that pattern this year. It doesn't take much to dry for winter use -- half a dozen plants is plenty -- but we use a lot more than that for pesto.