Thursday, August 25, 2011

Summer Salsa, and the Reason for Inconsistent Blogging

I know, I know - I'm terrible at doing this regularly.  I have a good excuse though.  It turns out, I'm growing a person.  It's hard to make yourself do things when all you want in the world is to stop throwing up and then have a really long nap.

However, the nice doctors have given me anti-nausea medication so I've been feeling more like a human being than a throw-up factory the last little while.

To celebrate, I made, and canned, some salsa. Woo!
I admit, I dragged the stool into the kitchen and sat through most of it, but I managed to successfully do a whole salsa batch!

You of course, want to start with some fresh veggies.  Something like these ones (2 kinds of hot pepper in the bag, a green pepper, some red onions):
Of course, you'll also need some tomatoes.  I used the Black Plum tomatoes from my plant in the garden.
You'll also need things like vinegar (I used red wine vinegar), pickling/kosher salt, sugar, tomato sauce, garlic (mmm garlic), spices and a giant handful of cilantro.

You'll need to peel the tomatoes first, but then you can just throw everything in a pot together and boil it down until you get a texture you like.
Your whole house will smell delicious.
Eventually, you will end up with a nice thick, chunky salsa, at which point, you can start canning.  Or not - eating right away is also an option.
I ended up with five jars of salsa, and a little bit left over to eat right away.
The extra salsa lasted all of five seconds.  My poor partner didn't get any.
I'm resisting the urge to open the jars.