Awesome Book

So I bought this awesome canning book.  I can't wait to start making some recipes.

It's Almost Time

We are about 10 days away from having fresh lettuce.  Bye, bye salad in a bag.

Salsa Time

So I made three kinds of salsa with all my garden goodies; zesty, fiesta, and jalapeno salsa.

My favorite so far is Jalapeno Salsa.  It's a recipe I found in Ball's Blue Book Guide to Preserving.  

makes about 3 pints

3 cups chopped, seeded, peeled, cored tomatoes
3 cups chopped, jalapeno peppers
1 cup chopped onion
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons minced cilantro
2 teaspoons oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 cup cider vinegar

Combine all ingredients in a large saucepot.  Bring mixture to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes.  Ladle hot salsa into hot jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.  Adjust two-piece caps.  Process 15 minutes in a boiling water canner.

Do you have any good salsa recipes?  I love to hear them!

What's up Doc?

The carrots are done.  It took about 10 hours to harvest the carrots, clean them, cut them and then can them.

It went from this...

                         

 
  (And yes we know they don't look like normal carrots. I think this happened because we did not till the ground deep enough so they did not have room to grow.  They still taste the same!)

To this...

And here's the funny part...we don't really eat carrots.  I guess we'll have to start.  I'm thinking I'm going to make a lot of soup and some chicken pot pie this winter.  Any other ideas on how to use my canned carrots?

What To Do With All These Tomatoes??

We are just being bombarded with cherry tomatoes.  We can't eat them as fast as they are ripening.   Of course we give some away to friends and family and eat them in our salad every night for dinner but it's seems like they are growing exponentially.

Here are two of my favorite recipes that incorporate cherry tomatoes.

First is Sautéed Squash and Tomato with Basil
            Olive Oil
             1 Yellow Squash (preferably from your garden) quartered
             A handful of cherry tomatoes (again from your garden) cut in half
             Chopped fresh basil (hopefully from your garden) or dried basil works fine
     
            1.  Heat the olive oil in a frying pan.  Once heated add the squash.  Sauté for about 8-10 minutes until the squash is soft.  
            2.  Then add the halved tomatoes to the pan.  Continue sautéing the mixture for about 2 minutes.
            3.  Before taking it off the heat add the basil.  Once the basil is incorporated into the mixture you can remove it from the heat and serve.    

Another good recipe is Balsamic String Beans with Cherry Tomatoes
             Fresh Green Beans (12 oz to a pound from your garden if you have them)
             1 tablespoon minced garlic
             1 cup cherry tomatoes (from your garden) halved
             2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
             2 tablespoons olive oil

           
             1. Cook string beans.  Then add garlic, tomatoes, vinegar and olive oil.  Mix well and refrigerate.

 I would love to here how you use the tomatoes in your kitchen.

Fields of Gold

Maybe I'll plant some sunflowers next year.

How beautiful are these?  

I finally got around to drying out my leftover herbs.

I got these cute little jars from Williams-Sonoma's website.

Has anyone ever dried cilantro?  I did it and it smelled like feet.