Salsa 2nd time around

So I made my attempt to make salsa again. Only this time I didn't have the tomatillos to make salsa verde. They just weren't ready yet. The one tomatillo plant I had that produced the early harvest has died off so I am waiting for the other plants to start producing.

So I ventured into the territory of red hearty roasted salsas. Below you will see my ingredients. I did have to buy a few things mainly because my garden didn't readily have these items available. This includes; the onion, four roma tomatoes, and a can of corn. Everything else you see on the counter below was grown in my back yard.

Those ingredients include; fresno peppers, anaheim peppers, cayenne peppers, serrano peppers, jalapeno peppers, a few tomatillos, a few chili peppers, cherry tomatoes, and garlic.

I chopped all the peppers and tomatoes in half and gutted most of the seeds and insides and put them on a baking sheet with foil.

Chopped half of the onion for the baking sheet and saved the other half to add later raw as well as 2 out of the 4 roma tomatoes. Added the corn to the baking sheet to also roast in oven.

After 10-15 mins in the broiler they came out looking like this. Now I let them cool for a while and then added them to the blender along with the raw onion and tomatoes mentioned earlier.

Now I cannot take full credit for the final product. To be honest it wasn't right. Only after my friend Rachel tinkered with it did it come out perfect. I was missing a few ingredients like cilantro, lime juice and some more tomatoes and the juices. Also she added some salt and sugar. See my salsa was very thick and very natural. It didn't really have anything added which is what it needed. It wasn't sweet enough.. I'm glad to say though that it tastes amazing. And really spicy. You can really taste all those jalapenos and serranos.

Comments

Recycled sunflower stalks used to make grapvine trellis

So a little while back a posted about my grapevine extending out from my fence into the alley. It needed some support for it to continue its growth. So I brainstormed and thought what better way than to re-use the stalks from the sunflowers as a natural trellis. So I found a few tall stalks that were great for the task. I literally had to hatchet the stalks down. My clippers weren't strong enough to cut through their thickness. I already broke one set of pruners trying. I stripped the leaves off and dug them into the ground. Then used a smaller stalk as a cross beam for the vine to travel down. I think they really work out well. They similar color to the vine itself and add a natural touch to what would probably be an artificial structure. I have no idea how long they will hold up but I'm hoping a long time. Especially once the vine become entangled. I've also used some of the smaller sunflower stalks to create support sticks for leaning plants. I reccommend trying to...

Grapevine reaching out for support

So my grapevine is reaching out for support. I've tried to weave this vine into my fence but there are places where its just reached beyond for more. So i think I might try to build somekind of support structure into the alley. Maybe a simple pole or piece of wood to create a natural grapevine arch. My strategy has been to weave each independent vine into others to create a super vine that can still reach out and support itself. Sort of looks like an elephant.

Topping your early pepper plants

So I know you are going to think why would I want to cut the tops off my young pepper plant? Won't it die? Won't it hurt the plant? Take this example above of this young Shishito pepper plant. Now you can see with my snips I am about to cut just the top section of the leaves. Below the cut area I still have three levels of leaves. I don't recommend cutting your plant if it only has one set of leaves. Only perform topping when there are more than one set, preferably multiple leave layers. The cut will force growth back to the lower levels making your plant more stable with more lower branches as well produce more fruit. One stalk will be unstable when fruiting and limit production but the topping will add more layers and depth to your plant. This topping exercise can be performed more than once to help make a more dense plant. Some will even go so far as to remove flowers to help the plant grow larger or stronger before producing peppers.

Cardiff Garden Blog

Search This Blog