You say "To-MAY-to", I say "To-MAH-to"

Ok, since that cake blog entry was pretty long, we'll keep this short & sweet. (Well, as short as I can!)

After a couple of days of scheduling issues, those tomatoes finally made it to Salsa! It's nice to have homemade salsa, but with all the peeling, chopping, & cooking (reduction) time, it's not one of the easier or quicker things to can at home! And that was with Todd helping me by peeling and chopping all the tomatoes, plus some of the peppers. You really need the better part of a day set aside to make salsa. The pot in the first picture has only tomatoes in it.


Our salsa turned out a lot like Pace picante sauce. We used tomatoes (duh!), onions, green peppers, jalapeno peppers, lemon juice, garlic, oregano, paprika, salt, pepper, sugar, and I'm not sure what else Todd may have tossed in there. These are the onions & peppers chopped (we added more peppers after this), plus the jalapenos.

I had made a smaller batch a week previously, to try out the recipe. We decided the only real change would be to peel the tomatoes. Found out the tomatoes break down more when they're peeled, so now I would cut them into bigger chunks to make up for that. I think it's a personal preference thing.

So I'd heard and read all about being careful with hot peppers, not to use the seeds, and to wash your hands, etc. So I did! I washed my hands. More than once.

STILL, hours later, I could feel the sting in my hand that held them, I had a burning feeling where I'd rubbed my nose, and after many handwashings, there is still a bit of a bite if I rub my eye with that hand. Talk about potent. Now I'm hearing to rinse my hands in lemon juice to cut it, so that's my next approach. Followed by lotion!!

Anyway, the big pot was nearly full, but after cooking down, we got 6 1/2 pints of salsa from it.

Just one more way to keep that garden taste going all year long!