Salsa so good I could eat it with a spoon!

I've come to that wonderful time of year when my tomato plants go above and beyond the call of production and I have to figure out how to preserve them for the rest of the year. This morning I picked a overflowing 5-quart ice cream bucket full of red beauties! (But did I take a photo? No, not me!)

I just need to take minute and tell you how much I LOVE tomatoes! (My mom would be shocked! I didn't like them as a child, but now I've turned into my mom!) The ones that are home grown are so wonderfully sweet that my DIL says I must roll them in sugar! I've found that the Early Girl tomato works really well for me here. I can't put them in until after Mother's Day (but we can still have frost through the end of May) and we've had snow on September 20 as well. Yes, short growing season. But with some careful watching I can prolong my tomato production into the end of October if I get them covered on cold nights.

Enough about growing tomatoes- let's talk about eating them!! Did I mention I love tomatoes?

So I had this first harvest and wondered what to do with them. Last year I tried my hand at salsa, but I wasn't too happy with the results. I wanted some good salsa in the basement but then I started thinking... Pasta-Dragged-Through-The-Garden for dinner and I wanted that as well. What to do? What to do? I finally hit on the idea that I could make salsa with the fresh tomatoes and make the pasta sauce using last year's bottle tomatoes. Win-Win!
(*Pasta-Dragged-Through-The-Garden is sauce with all sorts of vegetables in it: tomatoes [duh], onion, garlic, celery, carrots, yellow squash, zucchini, fresh basil and anything else that may be lying around!)

I needed some chiles for my salsa and thought I could just pick them up while I was at Wal-Mart. They don't have a very broad choice of chiles- Ancho and some nameless fatter darker chile. I found one of the produce guys and asked him if these were hot. Hmm, he didn't speak English, so I pulled out my basic So. CA Spanish and asked, "Caliente?" No, picante. Ahh, good, muy bueno! Then miming and using some Spanglish I said, "A bowl of pico de gallo this big (mime a 2 quart bowl), one jalepeno! Mi Gringa!" Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha... by now there were two Hispanic produce guys one from Argentina and one from Mexico. The Argentine was with me on the "not-to-hot" salsa and the Mexican scoffed at us whimpy-babies! What a delightful interaction to have with these men. We had a laugh and communicated with our basic skills. I love diversity!!


So I got home with my one Ancho Chile, "no es caliente" (I could have put in 4-5) and went to work making this year's Award Winning Salsa. Yummy! I am very pleased with the results. As I said, salsa so good I could eat it with a spoon! Camille, no es Gringa, will not think it is spicy-hot enough, but I love it. I ended up with 5 pints. I'll be making more of this!







Salsa so good I could eat it with a spoon!
1- overflowing 5-quart ice cream bucket fresh tomatoes, cored, peeled and roughly chopped
1-5 Ancho chiles, diced
1 bunch fresh cilantro, finely chopped
1 humongous onion, chopped
1 tsp crushed garlic
1-2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1/2 c vinegar
2 T ClearJel (this is a thickening agent made from tapioca that can be used in canning), optional

Bring all ingredients except ClearJel to a boil. Lower temp and cook 10-20 minutes, stirring frequently. If desired, remove some of the liquid to a small bowl and mix in ClearJel. Stir back into salsa and continue cooking until thickened, about 5 min.

Ladle into clean hot pint jars. Wipe rim of jars clean and adjust lids. Process in boiling water bath 15 minutes.

Makes a little over 5 pints (so you have enough to taste!)