Yeah, that's fake enthusiasm. I know, I know - you could tell. Really, I am glad to be back home. I was getting a little tired of being a perpetual guest, despite the outstanding and generous hosting of my parents, my grandmother, and Heidi. As much as I'm enjoying my own apartment, I am already quite nervous about the imminent start of the next school year.
In fact, I'm going to continue to try to ignore it's approach. Other subjects!
While in Grand Junction, my mom and I decided to make ourselves some salsa! (In my head, "salsa" is always said with an exclamation point and jazz hands. Please imagine along with me.)
We picked up a box of Palisade peaches from the farmer's market and set to work. We started using these recipes, but quickly moved into more of a winging-it approach.
Just laying out all of our ingredients made quite the mess:
Our first salsa! pretty much followed the original recipe. It was really mild, and when we canned it, it looked like mustard pickles. But look how pretty and yellow!
Salsa! #2 had the addition of tomatoes:
I didn't take a picture of Salsa! #3. We experimented with a peach-mint-ginger-pineapple juice blending. It worked great as a marinade (I slow-cooked a pork roast in it for dinner tonight), but not so much as a dipping salsa!
We were out of peaches by Salsa! #4, so we threw together everything we had left and wound up with a very tasty tomato-corn-black bean version. I took a picture of this one, but the focus and the coloring was off and made it look, um, non-appetizing. Here's a picture of #5 instead:
The last salsa! we made came from the Salt Lake farmer's market. I had purchased a really, really yummy green salsa! there and copied down the ingredients to try to recreate it. I've had requests already for the recipe. Which I don't have, since I was totally making up the amounts as I went. Here's the ingredient list with amounts to the best of my recollection/guess:
Tomatillo-Avocado-Anaheim Salsa!
Tomatillos (4 or 5)
Avocado (1.5 medium ones)
Anaheim Pepper (about 3/4 of a large one)
Cilantro (maybe 1/2 a cup while leafy? So, probably a couple of tablespoons chopped?)
Apple Cider Vinegar (a big squirt of it - maybe 3 or 4 tablespoons?)
Honey (I used a honey substitute because of my dad's allergies. Probably 3 tablespoons)
Lime Juice (half of a large lime, squeezed)
Rosemary (I forgot to add this, actually)
Cayenne (didn't find any, so I used a good dash of paprika instead)
Ginger (also a good dash)
Sea Salt (about two pinches)
Toss it all in a food processor and blend.
And so I add another archaic skill to my list of Hobbies-That-Are-Not-At-All-Cost-Effective-But-I-Hope-Will-Come-In-Handy-During-The-Apocalypse.
Thanks for the canning lesson, Mom!
As a bonus thank you to my parents, who very nicely allowed Natasha to live with them for a good seven or eight weeks this summer despite her neediness and plant-munching tendencies, I gratefully present this embedded video:
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