Coffee on the Porch with Me: salsa

Friday, 9 September 2022

Friday, September 9, 2022 - Let's Salsa!

Of course, the foremost in minds in Canada is the death of the Queen. Although we are not surprised given her remarkable age, it is still a momentous event. My daughter’s boyfriend proudly displays a picture of the Queen ( updated- not the age old framed picture that always hung in our schools as children) in his office ( he works in municipal government). There has always been a connection to the monarchy in Canada. We will watch to see how Charles steps in and hopefully leads with the same grace as his mother.

On a different, yet repetitive, note, my tomatoes continue to ripen and my canning marches forward.

I’ve already made seasoned tomato sauce and my mother’s chili sauce.

Today I embarked on a friend’s salsa recipe.

Time to get all the paraphernalia ready - not like it was stored away since the last round of canning... I just noticed that picture is out of place - I wasn't boiling the water in the blancher quite yet at that stage.

Lots of chopping ensued.

There were onions from my garden.

Lovely green peppers from my garden (a good year for them), and...

although you can't really tell, there are three jalapeno peppers chopped up (minus the seeds) on top of the mix. They were NOT from my garden.

Next came garlic... I made sure to find Ontario garlic. The two gigantic bulbs beside the package came from garlic that a dear friend grew and shared with me.

I minced up all those cloves.

I washed and cut out the stem ends of a combination of Roma and "regular" tomatoes. For future reference, that amount, after blanching, peeling, and seeding came to about five cups of chopped tomatoes. I needed about nine to ten cups in total.

I set the mixture (also includes a bit of cilantro, salt, sugar, apple cider vinegar, some cumin and two small cans of tomato paste to thicken it) on the stove to come to a boil and bubble away for about 20 minutes.