How to Make Salsa

(originally posted Sept 2, 2010)

We've been making up batches of salsa, using some of those fantastic tomatoes we got last weekend....pick up the recipe over here.....it is Worth making, it is so good!

I think we've done about 30 half pints and will probably do another 20.

 We love a good snack of Salsa and chips!

I don't know why I have never grown my own Cilantro....I should tho as I need it for our Salsa.

I always get it from my Valley friend, who has lots of it at her place.

Here's a batch of Salsa, simmering away....

And, when we're not doing Salsa, we seem to be canning up lots and lots of Tomato Sauce....

It's a busy time doing all this preserving, but it is certainly worth it. We'll be able to eat year round out of garden this way....and we like knowing what we eat!

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Ginger is spending part of her days hanging out down at the barn...I take her down with me when I go to feed and leave it up to her as to whether she wants to come back up to the house....

She won't go down there on her own, I carry her. But once down there, she often finds something to amuse herself (like chasing balls of fluff from the cottonwoods) and stays down there for awhile.

I have now got the temporary fencing up down there for the hens. In the afternoons after their egg laying is finished, I open up the runs and they can go out all around the barn and forage for some food. They are doing a good job of "weeding" down close to the barn!

In the evening I go down and put them back in their run and bring all the meat birds back into the meat bird room.

Busy hens laying lots of eggs now every day for us!

The meat birds are getting bigger!

They are now six weeks old....so in two weeks we can probably start butchering.

I've started scrambling eggs  daily to give to them which they love!

Greenhouse hot Peppers coming along nicely

The tomato plants are growing and flowering!

On the left are the peppers. Along the back is the Corn....this year we bought a Stihl with a blade attachment. I've been using it to clean up along side the upper driveway. It works awesome!

We also got the tiller attachment....it also works well but it is quite heavy for me to use. My arms will be Huge by the time I get all the tilling done around here!

My right arm does bother me after using it....it still gets sore.

We are harvesting Spinach, Lettuce Greens and Turnips now. The peas are growing wonderfully and are just now starting to flower. I did put them in a bit late this Year....

Today I am concentrating on getting more eggs Pickled....and I want to finish the Upper pathway in the Main Garden. I am putting down empty feed bags, then putting Straw on top of that. I'd rather not had to resort to the feed bags, but I have to do something to reduce the amount of weeding around here.

Next week, I think a bit of Fishing is in the plans! Fun....we love fishing here in the Cariboo, there are so many lakes to choose from! They stock most of the lakes around here so fishing is almost always good!

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In The Greenhouse

The Greenhouse is off to a good start....the plants don't look quite as nice as last year.

This year I didn't even get the Greenhouse opened up in time to receive my flats of seedlings! Too much to do around here, and I was just moving my trays out onto the porch during the day, then bringing them in at night.

These jugs are filled with water....we use them to weigh down the tarp which is put over the greenhouse for the Winter. (An attempt to keep the wind from ruining the plastic.)

This year, I have spray painted them a flat black. I'll place them inside the greenhouse. The jugs should warm up nicely during the day and then release that heat during the night.

I planted the corn....then something (maybe a mouse?) came along later that day and cleanly broke off two of the corn plants. Grrrr.....so I planted some more seeds, hoping that will work.

The tomatoes, staked and tied....we reduced the number of plants for this year. I think we have 4 Cherry, 2 Beefstake and 5 Jetsetters.....

We plan on making a trip to Lilloet for a day of tomato picking later this Summer. We just don't have enuf room for all the tomato plants we would need!

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Pizza Sauce

I took the last batch of tomatoes out of the freezer and am going to make Pizza Sauce out of them!

We heated up the 'maters and once warm and soft, mashed them. Then we ran them thru the food mill....put all the pureed sauce back on the stove.

And there it has sat....I think it's been 3 days now. I just left it on Low all the time, and we'd stir it each time we walked by and remembered it was on there.

Here's what it looked like last night....thick enuf that the wooden spoon stands up own its own!

You can see from the sides of the pot that the sauce has reduced quite a bit.

The recipe: (which I got from Homesteading Today) The "I" below is the poster who gave out the recipe.

pureed tomatoes (about 6 – 7 pounds)

2 large finely minced onions

4 minced garlic cloves

3 TB olive oil

2 TB lemon juice

1 teaspoon cracked pepper

1 TB sugar

2 TB fresh chopped parsley

1 TB dry oregano or 3 TB fresh

1 TB dry basil or 3 fresh

1 tsp celery seed

2 tsp salt

You want to mix all this together and cook until it decreases by half. I put mine in a roaster and bake it in the oven overnight at about 200 degrees.

To make it "super spicy" (how I like it,) just DOUBLE all the spices not the salt and sugar though.Substitute brown sugar or honey for white, for a different taste. You can cook a bay leaf in with it too. Also try some sweet red peppers finely chopped.

Process in a water bath canner 25 minutes for pints. Start timing after the water starts boiling. Makes about 5 pints.

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Heirloom Tomatoes

A friend was here for a visit today and brought this beautiful basket of heirloom tomatoes that she got from another friend.....they're gorgeous!

And since they are heirloom, we'll save seed from each of them. We can try to grow them next year....there are at least 4 different kinds in the basket...also some tomatillos and a couple of sweet peppers.

And...I sorted thru my paper bags of our homegrown Amish Paste and Romas...got quite a few ripe ones! So got them washed and cut up and tossed them in the freezer. We're now down to 1 paper bag full of 'maters left to ripen.

I got a card from a good high school friend...I got a chuckle from it! Grrrrrrrr

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'Maters, 'Taters and Hats

Appointment yesterday went well....felt so good when we got home, I got a few things done. Lots to do still around here and best to get something done while I can.

Checked again on the 'maters in the paper bags.....took out all the nice ripe ones. Found a few more with frost damage on them (foreground), and set them aside for the pigs.

We could maybe cut away the portions damaged by frost and freeze the rest of the mater but I'm not sure....I'll need to look into that - does anyone know if that is ok to do?

Put the rest back in the paper bags, with a thin layer of newspaper on top, making sure I added quite a few fairly ripe tomatoes to each bag.

I'm going to try to get out later this morning once it warms up and keep on digging potatoes....I think we're down to digging the last 7 rows. Gotta get the job done and move onto something else!

Rockin' the Cassock.....nice toasty warm little hat, made of fleece...keeps the dome warmer!!

-6C here this morning at 8am....we are hoping it doesn't snow soon. It is Way Tooo early for snow!

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Frost - There Go the Tomatoes

This is what we woke up to the other morning. After all that time with warm evenings, Nature decided to shake things up for us!

Frost everywhere.....

Then, I remembered the greenhouses. Ran down, and found this......poor squash

and this....Poor Poor Tomatoes.

We had the doors closed on both greenhouses. We have vents (sort of) up in the peak, and that is where the cold air must have come on.

The greenhouses are covered with 6 mil. poly, left over from a building project. Greenhouse poly is 10ml, I think, so if we had the proper poly on, things maybe would have been ok....

I've picked, sorted and bagged all the tomatoes up...there seem to be paper bags full of maters all over the dining room....The fruit that got hit is being fed off to the pigs, who seem to like them!

I'll check the bags every couple of days, pull out the ripe ones, cut them up and toss them in the freezer. I always leave a couple ripe tomatoes in each paper bag, hoping that helps to speed the ripening up.

I'd be a lot more depressed if we hadn't gone and picked lots of tomatoes this summer. I'm really glad I have so many jars on the shelf already...it makes seeing these poor tomatoes a little easier to bear!

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Mo' Salsa and Drying Tomatoes

We got some good stuff accomplished today.....picked 20 lbs of beets for someone in the Valley, and she is going to turn them into pickled beets for her family.

Finished canning the last double batch of salsa....

We had about 3 dozen nice Romas left over, so I sliced them up, seeded them and put them on cookie sheets. 150 degrees is supposed to dry them nicely.

I had wanted to try drying them in our car. I have read that it can really work well. But I didn't think of it in time....it was 3pm this afternoon before I thought of what to do with those last tomatoes....so I stuck them in the oven instead.

Even then, I had about 9 or 10 nice Romas left over. I brought them over to my neighbour who was more than happy to use them up!

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Salsa and Sauce

We made a double batch of salsa the other night....used the recipe from last year. It tasted so good, everyone loved it!

Mixed up all the veggies and let them sit in the fridge overnight. In the morning, we added the vinegar and spices and processed them in the water bath.

Looks great! And tastes even better!

Tonight, we've got another batch of tomato sauce in the canner. Think we have done almost 40 pints now. We're going to do a few quarts and then we'll be done with sauce.

Onemore double batch of salsa is next on the list....

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'Maters....and Making Sauce

We stopped at a Garden Market along the way to grab tomatoes....I already knew from last year that we didn't have even half of what we could go thru in a year.

So we spent a couple of hours picking both Romas and Beefsteaks. We got a total of 225 pounds, which we split with a neighbour.

Today, we started washing and sorting out the Beefstakes. We washed them, cut them into small pieces and set them on the stove to boil for a while.

Once they heated up and softened some, we mashed them with a potato masher.

Then we put them through the mill we have. It takes the seeds and skins away, leaving just the juice!

Then we put all the sauce into the large stockpot and set it on the stove to heat up....

Here is the sauce bubbling away....it has to reduce by a lot.

After a couple of hours....

Later on, we emptied the smaller pot into the larger one. We left it on low all night last night.

It smells wonderful in the house this morning!!!

We'll probably just let it continue until later this afternoon. Then we can start canning! We'll add some parsley, lovage, cilantro and some lemon juice. Then we'll put the jars in the boiling water bath.

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Trimming Tomatoes

Wow! Did our tomatoes ever need a trim job! A LOT to do around here, and a lot harder for just one poor guy to try and get things done....

Gman climbed around inside Greenhouse #1 yesterday.....you can see the plants on the left needed a good trim!

There...that looks better!

And here's that greenhouse finished.....he stripped off all the leaves Below the first set of flowers....this will direct the energy into setting fruit and hopefully getting it to ripen.

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In the Greenhouse

It's planted, finally.....

The remaining tomatoes got planted a couple of days ago.....

Tomatoes blooming already (bad me, they should have been planted earlier)

Nice roots......

See the sucker? It's coming up between the main and side stem....

Pinch the suckers out.....

Left side, planted in tomatoes, with 2 squash in the back corner. They will hopefully send out trailing stems that will cover the bases of the tomatoes.

Corn, 3 rows along the back wall.

Different kinds of squash and pumpkin along this side. I had room in the greenhouse for squash, because I lost some of the tomatoes that should have been here.

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