Salsa

Part I 
So as Noelle mentioned in her blogs past, we are proud homeowners.  When we moved into our house last June, we more or less missed our chance to plant a garden.  Now, this spring, we planted a small garden in the backyard.  Noelle has the genius idea to use a "raised bed" approach.  I was skeptical at best that a small garden would produce much of anything, but as usual, she was right on the  money. 

I watched patiently.

Very Patiently...

Okay, so about 2 days into it, I was pretty sure I had defective plants that were never going to grow anything.

What seemed like an eternity later we had a few flowers perk up on the tomato plants.  I upgraded that chances of actual produce from, say, a negative 12 to somewhere between 3 and 4.  We then took off to visit some of Noelle's family in Wyoming.  Upon our return, we were flabergasted!

Our cute little plants had mutated into something between an octopus, and the rain forest.  Most of the cages had been pushed over by the plants, and the remainders were straining under the weight...

...Anyhow, the long and short of the story is, we have had an unbelievable number of tomatoes come out of the garden so far, and there are 6 or 7 thousand remaining.

Part II.
Now, with the first 10 or so tomatoes, I just HAD to make some Salsa.  It'll be easy I said.  Only 4 or 5 ingredients I said...(Yes, my internal dialogue often sounds like an argument between Waldorf and Statler).  I chopped.  I boiled.  I talked nice to it.  I sang it a spicy little song which I came up with off the top of my head.  Peppers? Absolutely.  Blender?  Bring it on.  The end result can be graded something like a 'meh'.

Now Noelle, being the culinary whiz as usual used the next batch of tomatoes to make some great tomato sauce.  Not to be outdone, I set my sites on the 'beta' batch.  Unfortunately we had used ALL of the tomatoes.  (See Part I Paragraph II...)

Part III  Salsa, take II
Come Sunday this week, I felt pretty strongly that we had enough tomatoes to try again.  I used the "blender technique" to give us some of the onion-ey goodness that the first batch was needing, and threw in a Poblano pepper for good measure...it sounded Mexican....  Anyhow, after more chopping, dicing, waiting, boiling, yelling, singing, and dancing I had produced my second batch!

Needless to say, it was graded by my co-worker Chris Haugen as a 'meh +'...

Thoroughly stumped, I went to the grocery store today, and purchased every Mexican sounding, salsa possibility in the produce department.  Once again, I simmered, grilled, quartered, slivered, pulverized, blended and more or less butchered all of the produce and boiled away.  It's difficult to tell if the salsa is any good yet, as it's still pretty hot, but I feel good about it.

As it turns out, the appropriate recipe goes something like this:

• Approximately 30 tomatoes. (20 or so from the garden, and 10 more from Hy-Vee just to show the mix who's boss)
• 1 Poblano pepper 
• Most of the top of a bunch of cilantro
• 3/4 of a bunch of onions (Infinitesimally small)
• 2 jalapenos

Generally bang them around, boil, cool, take to work, snack on it, return it home, and reinsert into pot, then add:

• 2 Bell Peppers
• 2 Yellow Peppers
• 4 Hutch chili. (I still think they may be Anaheim Chilies, but who can say)
• 1 midget red pepper from the garden
• 3 more jalapenos
• 2 cans of tomato paste
•  6 Tomatillos (I still don't know what they taste like...)

Remove a portion for Noelle

• AND 3 ENTIRE BUNCHES OF DELIGHTFUL LITTLE GREEN ONIONS!

Chill and serve.
Yields approximately 12 cups.
-Aaron