Ay Ya Ya!

Well folks, I think the canning bug may have bit us. Aside from running through our normal morning routine, I found myself out in the garden picking our first (looks like more to come) wave of beautiful fire engine red tomatoes. I would estimate our garden has provided us with about twenty to thirty cherry and beefsteak tomatoes, of which the largest was comparable to a large fig. All the same, they are all delicious. After treating myself to one while picking the rest, enjoying the refreshing burst of flavor a sweetness, I snuck just one more. Yum.

Into the kitchen, washing our cache of garden delights, we began making our own salsa. An idea, my wife had after visiting our dear friends in Minnesota (congratulations by the way). So, into a blend went all of our tomatoes, plus a few full size beefsteaks, plus...ready for this..

- three jalapenos, plus half the seeds of one;

- eight cloves of garlic;

- one lime and half a lemon, freshly squeezed;

- about half a cup of fresh cilantro;

- about one to two tablespoons of red pepper

flakes;

- about half as much cumin;

- one yellow onion; and

- half of a red onion.

Unlike last time, we are slightly more prepared. This time we bought a canning kit which included a magnetic lid retriever (cool!), and large mouth funnel (even cooler!), and a pair of jar tongs (the coolest bomb diggity tool ever!). Now I will never have to don that blue silicon glove, moving the jars in and out of that scalding water. Oh sure it's rated to five-hundred degrees, but the real questions is, for how long can it be at that temperature before people start calling you lefty? Answer... not as long as you think. So, with our jars filled, ten of them to be exact, we sent them all off for a day at the spa. Forty-five minutes later, ding, everybody out of the pool. Then we waited...pop!, waited some more followed by seven more pop! I regret to inform you that three of our little spicy salsa soldiers didn't pop!, never fear, into the chill chest to be gobbled up later, yum-yum.

Today also marked a major change in our garden. We have decided that due to the continued drop in production, it is time to say goodbye to our pea and cucumber plants. I spent a short time in the garden this evening, cutting out those plants, as well as some of the other leaves and dead growths. I was also able to utilize some of the trellises from the cucumbers to shore up one of our tomato plants, which turned out to be a late bloomer; some of our corn stalks; and our pepper plants. The weather was pleasant, and the mosquito's stayed away, so it made a nice end to our day.