Homemade Garden Salsa

There is nothing like a home grown tomato. For summer suppers, we usually eat them sliced as a side dish with a little salt and pepper. They come in from our garden, fresh-picked by a preschooler, still hot from the summer sun and slice up juicy, thick, dripping with tomato seed goo.

And yet as delicious as they are, this year has been bountiful (Thank you Lord!) and it is time to make salsa or they will all ROT! It is difficult to find a recipe that knows that the tomatoes are booming and the peppers are still slow, and we have run out of all but the egg-sized garden onions. I had to adjust a few recipes I came across in order to make garden-grown salsa based on what we had.

A few batches later and I had learned a whole lot about salsa. I also found out that it is sometimes difficult to get a really hot, firey (oh yeah) salsa, because peppers can be unpredictable.

But here’s what the processing of most of our batches looked like, with a few tweaks along the way.

Garden Salsa

Base Recipe:

4 quarts tomatoes, peeled, diced or blended, (drained in colander if too juicy)

1 cup chilies or any variety sweet peppers, diced

3 cups onions, diced

1-1/2 cups jalapenos, diced

3 cloves garlic, chopped finely

1 cup lemon juice or apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cumin

1 tightly-packed cup chopped fresh cilantro

Combine all but last two ingredients in large pot. Bring to a boil and cook on medium heat for 5-10 minutes before adding cilantro and cumin. Stir and simmer 5 minutes more. If very watery after cooking and a thicker consistency is needed, add 1-2 6oz. cans tomato paste. Process using a recommended canning timetable, freeze, or eat fresh.

(Makes about 12 pints)

First, I took our bucket of tomatoes and gave each one a boiling water bath for about a minute.

From there they were dunked in a cool water bath and stacked on the drain board to await their scalping. 

This loosens the skins and they then peel off very easily.

My girls did the peeling. They love gory kitchen activities like this.

We had a little fun too… as usual.

Next those were popped in the fridge. As it turns out, that is where they would remain until I got my hands on another good stretch of time. I could have done an efficient finishing of this salsa project later that evening, but I promised the girls they would be able to help me make it, so it waited.

Then I chopped the jalapenos and chilies, and had to pack them into a container for safe keeping in the fridge until the next day. (I can highly recommend doing this step days in advance of a predicted tomato crop. If you can have everything ready for the pot, your salsa can be thrown together in a quick afternoon of tomato processing.)

Chop the tomatoes for a chunky salsa or send them through the blender or food processor if you like a smooth restaurant style batch.

Put everything in the stock pot and simmer 5-10 minutes before adding fresh chopped cilantro and cumin.

For fresh eating, stop here.

For canning, check your acidity, warm up your jars, lids, and water bath, and see an official canning times chart for times. (I won’t go into a canning tutorial or a big food safety speech, but use your brain and don’t poison your family!)

Try THIS LINK for more safety tips and recipes.

I canned each batch using our pressure canner for the water bath job. We ate what didn’t seal and stored (and shared) the rest. It’s not going to last us long…

Note to self: Next year more salsa!

Dear Homesteading Lady

Someone who is enthusiastic about homesteading is always fun to talk to. You can talk chickens, gardening, goats, housing (conventional and UN-conventional), herbal remedies, guns, etc. Usually you can name a subject and swap ideas, stories, and problems for a long time.

Then occasionally, you run into a real veteran homesteader. Someone who really knows a wealth of knowledge based on personal experience.

And then, you might just … want to have a two-sided conversation.

Dear Homesteading Lady: You are not the only homesteader on the planet.

Recently I was talking to a person who had lived an idealistic, romantic, simple life on the homestead for years before it was popular. She has homeschooled all her children and baked her own bread and cooked on a woodstove. She was incredibly sweet.

In our conversation, I listened and listened. I had to break away for moments at a time to tend to my children, but I jumped back in and responded to the stories with comments like, “oh, believe me, we know about outhouses!” or “We have those in our garden this year too.” or “That’s what we did for our youngest.” 

With a smile, she continued to tell stories and freely hand out advice.

And as the conversations went on, I began to be very frustrated with this woman. I couldn’t pin down why. Later that evening I realized I knew all about her “homestead life” now and she didn’t even know I had just spent the last 6 years as a homesteader too!

Dear Homesteading Lady: It’s not you, it’s me.

I had ALSO baked my own bread and used herbal remedies and foraged for wild food! I had lived without grid power and city water and I had used the wood stove to heat and cook and I had been kicked in the gut by an 800lb milker and I wanted desperately to tell her we were one in the same! And I still couldn’t believe it- had I really left her with the impression she had talked to a city girl? A greenhorn only interested in hearing about labeling mason jars with chalkboard paint?

I felt like I had earned at least a couple of sentences about what we had done. My responses were actually even polite ways of sneakily interjecting knowledge about our family. Hints that we are alike! But it fell on deaf ears, and left me worn out from the conversation.

Dear Homesteading Lady: I hope we meet again. I have a lot left to say.