Sunday, August 30, 2009

Fresh salsa

I love fresh salsa, it's so much better than jarred, and summertime is the best time to make it because all the ingredients are fresh and readily available. In fact, most of these ingredients came from our own backyard!

Here's our first tomato of the season! He's a small little bugger. In fact, all the romas seem to be small little buggers, but the beefsteak and heirlooms seem to be growing quite nicely. Oh, and I'm happy to announce that I have not lost a single plant to gophers this year, hooray! The hubz helped me line the bottom of our raised bed with the chicken wire and that seems to have done the trick. I've also been setting out gopher traps and have had quite a few successes. Those efforts, combined with the fact that I have 10 thriving tomato plants means that we'll be eating lots of fresh tomatoes this year!

I know that homegrown tomatoes are sweeter than store bought, but ours were so sweet that they didn't make a good salsa at all. I had to put a TON of lime juice in before it tasted "normal". Luckily I just planted a lime tree in our last year and it's producing fruit too.


Letting them sit in the fridge overnight also helped tone down the sweetness, so we ended up with something pretty tasty.

Ingredients:
- Tomaotes

- Red onion

- Jalapeno
- Cilantro
- Lime juice
- Salt
- Pepper

Directions:
- Dice the tomaotes into small cubes.

- Finely dice the onions (I skipped these this time because I didn't have any and didn't feel like going to the store)

- Finely mince the jalapeno
- Mince the cilantro (also skipped because I was too lazy to go to the store and let the ones in my garden die on me)

- Mix the tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, cilantro, lime juice and salt & pepper to taste.

- Put everything in the fridge for a few hours to let the flavors mellow together.

- Serve with tortilla chips or on a taco or other your favorite Mexican dish.

5 comments:

stephchows said...

I can't wait until I have a backyard and can start a garden!! Although John has a lot of bunnies in his neighborhood... I'll have to figure some kind of wall/netting out :)

Juliana said...

Your salsa sure looks yummie! It is so rewarding growing your own tomatoes :-)

MaryBeth said...

My husband is a salsa freak, he is drooling just looking at the picture and heading towards the computer with a chip

What's Cookin Chicago said...

The simpler the better! What a great salsa!

Unknown said...

You have a lime tree? I am so jealous! (That would be the equivalent of money growing on trees for me)