Summer Salsa

I made salsa recently...28 jars to be exact!

It all started the year my garden produced too many tomatoes to eat on my own.  Reese (who LOVES tomatoes) wasn't born yet, and T refuses to eat tomatoes in their "natural" state.  He'll choke them down in soups or casseroles, but adores a good bowl of chips and salsa.  Soooo, being the awesome wife I am, I decided to use the tomatoes to make salsa.  After tweaking the recipe 3 times, I finally achieved success - a thumbs up from T - which is not something he gives freely.

So, I've made salsa every summer since.  It makes me proud to say it's made with vegetables from my own garden!

Well, it's a little early in the season to get tomatoes from my garden, so I bought 1/2 a bushel from our local produce stand and got started.

First, I peeled and crushed the tomatoes.  Boiling them for 2 minutes makes peeling them very easy, but crushing them is a little more time consuming.  I think I spent about 2 hours preparing the tomatoes.

This made 34 cups of crushed tomatoes

Add 8 bell peppers,





6 onions



17 jalapenos



32 cloves of garlic,



 a few other spices and viola!  You have salsa!!

28 lovely jars that my husband thinks will last till next year.  Me thinks he forgot how many "batches" I made last year!

 

Don't you love how I made the cooking and canning part sound like it just magically happened?  

My Mom used to make us do 2 things I despised when we were little - hang Avon books on doors in her "neighborhood" and can vegetables from the garden.  I distinctly remember making myself a promise that I would not do either of those things when I was an adult and in control of my own life.

I'm happy to report that I've kept my promise on the Avon books :) 

And, because 2 of the jalapenos came from my garden, I'm still going to say I made this salsa with veggies from my garden 'cause I'm tricky like that!

Gardening

The first year we were married, Terry built me a couple of raised garden beds.  I've planted tomatoes, cucumbers, jalapenos and okra without fail since that time.   We live in the city, so were super surprised when he went out to the garden the other night to cut okra and peppers and ran into this:

Can you tell from that picture that it's a snake?!?  It seems that the snake got caught in the mesh netting we had up for the cucumbers and got stuck.  We wasn't going anywhere.  I was told that he was probably just a rat snake (which is supposed to be good for keeping rodents away), but the thought of a 5 foot snake roaming the yard was a little much even for the hubby.  He was extinguished (the snake, not hubby).  You'd think we lived in the country rather than a regular city sized lot in a subdivision.  Here's the snake in all his glory: