Peaches, Salsa, and Chili Sauce...Oh, My!

I've been trying to get peaches for about a month of farmer's markets, but every time I get in line, they run out of peaches before I can get any! The farmer only has apples left.

Of course, last Saturday when I went to the farmer's market for Gala apples, they were out of apples and only had peaches! Mildly disappointed that apparently Gala season is over, I bought a bag of peaches and let them ripen for a few days on the counter. Then I peeled and sliced them, added a small amount of sugar, and froze them. Hubby and I ate some of them tonight over pound cake, and they were delicious! Canned peaches (from the store) have nothing on these peaches...a little bit of heaven!

I also made another batch of salsa, ending up with 5 1/2 pints. I have enough salsa now, so I'll have to turn my tomatoes to other endeavors. Like tonight's chili sauce.

I don't know why I thought of making chili sauce, but when it crossed my mind, I knew I was going to make it, no matter how much trouble it was.

For a while--I don't know whether it was one season or more than that--Mom was into canning. I remember her making dill pickles, canned green beans, maybe some other things. Mostly, though, I remember the delicious chili sauce she canned from our garden tomatoes. We used to eat the chili sauce on hot dogs primarily, and I would always spoon it on the hot dog liberally. I don't eat hot dogs today, but I bet it would taste good with bratwurst!

Unfortunately, I don't have her recipe, so I went hunting online for a freezer recipe. I found one on a site that claimed to be from The Joy of Cooking. I own that recipe book, but never looked to see if it is indeed the same recipe. I followed the online recipe, but cut it down to a more manageable size. The original recipe called for 20 pounds of tomatoes, but since I do not yet have a food scale, that wasn't going to work. Plus, I was pretty sure I didn't have 20 pounds of tomatoes. I cut it down to 8 cups of tomatoes (that's after they are cored, skinned, and diced, mind you), and it made a reasonable amount: 4 pints.

As I was reading through the recipe, alarm bells went off. When I think of chili sauce, I think of a slightly warm, tomato-y mixture with perhaps some onions and green peppers in it. This recipe called for those ingredients and other ingredients one would expect. But then it called for a whole host of weird ingredients--at least they seemed weird to put into chili sauce: brown sugar, allspice, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg. I looked at a couple of other chili sauce recipes, and these ingredients showed up there, too. So I thought what the heck, I'll give it a try. The worst that could happen is the batch turns out nasty and I dump it out and have wasted some produce and 4 hours of my time.

Once the concoction started cooking, though, I was back in my childhood, savoring those chili-sauce smothered hot dogs. And when the batch was finished, it was delicious! So, I share that recipe with you here.

CHILI SAUCE

8 cups tomatoes (after coring, skinning, and dicing)
1 1/2 green peppers, seeded
3/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1 1/2 large white onions (I used sweet walla walla onions I had previously chopped and frozen)
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup cider vinegar
2 1/4 tsp. coarse salt (I don't know what this means, so I used my salt grinder salt)
3/4 tsp. black pepper (ground that, too, since I was using grinder salt-lol)
3/4 tsp. ground allspice
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. celery seed
1 1/2 tsp. dry mustard

1. Core, peel, and dice tomatoes.
2. Dump tomatoes into a nonstick or enamel-coated pan (you don't want the tomatoes to react with metal).
3. Add the remaining ingredients.
4. Bring the mixture to a boil and then simmer on low, stirring occasionally to keep from burning on the bottom.
5. Continue simmering until mixture is thick, about 3 hours.
6. Place the pan in a bowl of ice water to cool the mixture quickly.
7. When cool, transfer to freezer-safe containers (I prefer freezer-safe canning jars) and freeze.

Recipe: Fresh Garden Salsa

I was talking to my friend Teresa yesterday about the salsa I made and she asked for the recipe. Since I was going to be making another batch, I figured I'd take a photo and then offer up the recipe.

The basic recipe comes from a small book in the Learn How Now! series titled Super Salsas. I was looking for a good, basic recipe, and of all the recipes I looked at in my various recipe books, none seemed quite what I was looking for. They always seemed to have at least one ingredient that just didn't seem to belong. Their recipe is called "One Basic Recipe = Infinite Variations." I'll give you the recipe below, but true to form, I adapted it, so I'll offer my adapted recipe below theirs.

ONE BASIC RECIPE = INFINITE VARIATIONS

4 medium tomatoes
1 tsp. garlic
1/2 c. red or white onion
2 roasted jalapenos
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
3 Tbsp. fresh cilantro, chopped
1/4 tsp. salt

1. Dice tomatoes, mince garlic, and chop onions.
2. Wearing gloves, seed and chop roasted jalapenos.
3. In a large glass bowl, mix all ingredients.
4. Refrigerate for 30 minutes before serving.

Here's my adapted version:

FRESH GARDEN SALSA

4 medium tomatoes
1 heaping teaspoon minced garlic (I get mine at the dollar store; it's the minced garlic in its own juice, not the dried minced garlic)
1/2 c. chopped green onion
Old El Paso or other brand chopped jalapenos to taste
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
3 Tbsp. fresh cilantro, chopped
1/4 tsp. sea salt

(This makes enough salsa for 2-4 people who are healthy salsa eaters. I triple the batch so I can freeze some for later use. I'm not sure how the frozen salsa will turn out--it's an experiment.)

1. Core, blanch, and peel tomatoes. (I used several varieties of tomatoes for the triple batch I made: Brandywine, Plum, Yellow, Valencia, and Best Boy. Any tomatoes will do if they are fresh; if you are trying to make this salsa in the winter when the only tomatoes available are from the grocery store, I recommend experimenting with canned diced tomatoes.)
2. Dice tomatoes and dump into a glass bowl.
3. Add minced garlic, chopped green onion, jalapenos, lime juice (by the way, for the triple batch I only increased the lime juice to about 2/3 of a cup), cilantro, and sea salt.
4. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving.

If you can't eat jalapenos (I love jalapenos, but they do not seem terribly fond of me), try using chopped green chiles instead.

WARNING: If you are going to touch jalapenos, whether you will be roasting them or using the pickled ones, WEAR GLOVES. Jalapeno oils tend to stay on the skin even after repeated washings, and I can tell you from experience that jalapeno juice in the eye is NOT a good feeling. I have found, though, that if I get some jalapeno juice on my hands, the Veggie Wash that I use works very well at removing the oils!

Experiment with the recipe and have fun! The salsa is very fresh tasting--better than anything you'll find in a restaurant.

Yesterday's Harvest; Today's Market Purchases

While I was out taking pictures of my creepy bug infestations yesterday, I also grabbed a few tomatoes that caught my eye: A couple of brandywines, a Best Boy, and a plum tomato.

I was very pleased to note that my pepper plants are getting blossoms on them now. I am worried, however, that I won't get peppers from them quickly enough to beat the frost. We'll have to see. I don't know if I have the energy to build a cold frame for them--I'll have to do some looking online and see what it takes. I just planted too late, I think, but time will tell.

I stopped by the Bloomington Farmer's Market today and picked up some Italian flat-leaf parsley, some Ropp cheese (cojack; garlic-bacon cheddar, and tomato-garlic-basil cheddar), some beets, 4 anjou pears, some salad lettuce, some heirloom tomatoes ($1 a pound for defectives, many of which had hardly any defects) for salsa making, some green, yellow, and red sweet peppers, and a bag of peaches. The peaches are huge, and I hope they are sweet! The crap they call "peaches" in the store are never ripe when you buy them, and if you try to ripen them on the counter, they go bad overnight. Blech. All of what I purchased was fresh, herbicide- and pesticide-free, and from local farms. I also purchased another 1.5 pounds of bacon made from pastured piggies. Yum!

I'm hoping, too, that the sunflowers, which are now all open, will develop their seeds before the frost. I'd really like to be able to roast sunflower seeds this year.

I need to order a cover crop for the garden. I'm thinking hairy vetch instead of winter wheat, to help break up the soil. Any suggestions?

Using Up My Tomato Stash

I washed up my tomatoes from the last few harvests, tossed a couple that had gone bad, and then peeled them all. At first, I thought I might turn them all into salsa, but then I worried that the salsa might not turn out, and I would hate to waste all those tomatoes on nasty salsa. So I split the batch, turning half of them into tomato sauce and the other half into salsa. I was very happy with the flavor of the salsa after refrigerating it for about an hour, so I went ahead and put it into freezer jars (although one of the pint jars ended up in the refrigerator for tomorrow night...I just have to get some chips to eat it with). I ended up with 3 1/2 pints of tomato sauce and 3 1/2 pints of salsa.

I still have some tomatoes left over, ripening fully on the window sill, so I may go ahead and make another batch of salsa in a few days, adding to it any other sizable tomatoes from the garden.

Now, if I could only figure out some way to freeze the overabundant sun sugar tomatoes without going through the peeling process...

Squash Bugs Are Called that Because They Deserve to Be Squashed

I managed two harvests this week. Monday I pulled in the last 3 zucchini, and then pulled the plants. The leaves were completely covered with powdery mildew, although the zucchini themselves were fine.

And then, when I pulled up the plants, I found something I hadn't missed at all.

Squash bugs. [shiver]

These creepy crawlies look almost spiderlike, particularly when they are small, and can quickly devastate your squash plants. I didn't think I'd have to worry about them this year, since this is the first year of squash plantings. How wrong I was! I'm just thankful the zucchini was at the end of its season before they presented themselves.

In addition to the three zukes, I managed a handful of green beans--the first (and perhaps even the last!)--as well as several more tomatoes. The tomatoes are clearly losing steam, and I didn't think I'd feel this way, but I'm a bit glad. I hauled in 2 Peach Toms, 3 nameless yellow tomatoes, 4 Best Boy, 1 Beefsteak, 1 Costulouto Genovese, and 4 purple tomatoes--not sure what kind. I've been calling them Brandywine, but today I realized they aren't. I also harvested 95 sun sugar tomatoes and 11 Sungold Select.

Today I harvested a second time this week and picked my first 9 okra! The okra plants are tall and strong, despite the chewed-up parts of several leaves where the Japanese beetles have been feeding. We can't seem to get rid of those little buggers!

I also harvested 7 plum tomatoes of some kind, 3 Peach Toms, 3 Beefsteak, 4 Brandywine, 3 purple tomatoes, 2 yellow tomatoes, 3 Best Boys, 101 Sun Sugars, and 16 Sungold Select.

My goal tonight is to make a batch of salsa and what will probably be the last batch of tomato sauce this season.

Planting Tomatoes. And More Tomatoes. And Still More Tomatoes.

My friend Michelle kindly supplied me yesterday with 14 varieties of heirloom tomato plants, 28 plants total. The varieties include Black Cherry, Bloody Butcher, Ox Heart, Black Tom, Sungold Select, Brandywine, San Marzano, Orange Banana, Cosmonaut Volkov, Costoluto Genovese, Soldacki, Peach Tom, Green Velvet, and Orange Strawberry. Some of them sound downright tasty. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the different tomatoes they produce and putting them all to a taste test!

Today I braved the 87-degree, ridiculously humid weather and planted every one of them. I didn't want to take the chance that it would rain AGAIN before I could get them in the ground. Or that I would leave them sitting around, neglected, like I did my first batch of tomatoes. I didn't have enough stakes, so tomorrow I will need to run to Menards to pick up additional stakes for support.

Speaking of which, my previous neglect of the hort-sale tomatoes didn't seem to do any lasting damage. With some grass clippings, stake support, and regular grow juice from Mother Nature, these plants are really greening up, filling out, and blossoming!

With today's planting of the heirlooms, my tomato plant count is now about 38. Which doesn't count the seedlings that I'm waiting on . . .

Okay, so maybe I'm a little tomato crazy. But you know, tomatoes do make great salsa. And you can can or freeze them (I'll be freezing them; I don't have the patience for canning.) And honestly, I suspect many tomatoes will never even make it into the house. They'll be eaten right there in the garden, warmed by the sun, their juice dripping down my chin. That day seems so far off right now, but it will be here before I know it.