Green Tomato Salsa Verde

Bad news: Most of my tomato plants got some weird blight and are dying fast.
Good news: I found a great recipe for Salsa Verde to use up my giant bucket of green tomatoes. I didn't even have to peel them. Usually salsa verde is made with tomatillos, but this one is good enough for me.

My Bernardin Home Preserving Guide redeemed itself with this one. It uses lime juice instead of vinegar. Maybe canning is getting a bit more popular with the under 80 crowd after all.

Salsa Verde:
7 C chopped green tomatoes
5-10 chopped jalepeno peppers
2 C chopped red onion
1 head of garlic
1/2 C lime juice
1/2 C chopped cilantro
3 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano, salt, pepper

Wash and seed and chop tomatoes. Drain excess liquid. Put tomatoes in a pot, add all ingredients. Bring to a boil, simmer for 5 mins. Eat, or can. It makes about 6 250ml jars.

**(March 2011 update: Okay, so many months later, I can admit that this salsa is gross. Might as well soak your corn chips in lime juice and sprinkle with cumim. The hot-ness of the peppers disappeared over the months and it got bland and just plain ick.)**
argh.

Slow Roasted Tomatoes

My piles of tomatoes have been accumulating, and I've decided that the best, laziest, way to reduce the pile is to slow roast them. So easy.
Cut them in half, toss them in olive oil, salt, pepper. Sprinkle with chopped garlic if you want to (I do). Lay on parchment paper and roast at around 300F for 2 -3 hrs. Stick with 1.5 hours for cherry or grape tomatoes. They taste like sun-dried tomatoes, but jucier! Throw them in freezer bags or use them to make a sauce. No peeling, seeding, boiling required.
The only problem is that my husband had a bad episode of food poisoning years ago that he equates with sun-dried tomatoes (funny how he doesn't feel that way about the beer that was the more likely culprit) and won't eat them. More for me.

Old Lady Salsa

Okay, have you ever noticed that at every Farmer's Market, bazaar, fair etc, there is always at least one woman (usually old or old-ish), selling preserves? I've been suckered in before, partly because they are so nice, and their products have deceptively yummy sounding names. However, it seems that, with the exception of jam, regardless of what I choose (salsa, chili sauce, chutney, etc.) it all tastes the same. Part of my quest this summer was to find a recipe that tasted like my grocery store salsa. I looked up "Salsa" in my Bernardin Home Preserving Guide, and found recipes for things like "Summer Salsa" and "Pepper Pear Salsa". I spent hours peeling pears, chopping peppers and jalepenos. Duh! What was I thinking? I should have known it would taste like...sorry...Old Lady Salsa. That's because it's got vinegar and sugar instead of lime and cilantro. Unless you're over 70 (80?), don't do it. You'll be sorry.

I was relieved to read a post on the blog Seasonal Ontario Food where the author mentions her preference for salsas without vinegar. Ah hah! That was the problem. The salsa recipe I tried is incredibly tasty, very much like what I buy at the grocery store, and pretty easy. I won't say it's quick, but if I can do it, anyone can. I'll call it Chili Lime Salsa, and you can find step by step instructions here.

Two Toonies

I just got two lovely surprises this week in the form of my 5 year old's latest birthday party invitations. Two separate invitations to "two-toonie gift" parties. As discussed in previous post on this topic, the idea is that guests are requested to bring two toonies in lieu of a traditional gift. The birthday kid keeps half and donates half of the money.
It makes me optimistic. Partly because I won't have to feel like I'm making my kids social outcasts by not giving regular birthday gifts at "normal" parties, and partly because maybe it means alot of people are sick of the birthday scene and looking for a way out. And if so, maybe it also means that alot of people are sick of accumulating so much unnecessary stuff. And maybe they too are disillusioned with our culture of entitlement. And if little kids are willing to give up presents without any fuss at all, maybe there is some real hope.

That said, today I bought some gratuitous stuff.

Like a 1950s housewife enthralled with appliances, I somehow convinced myself that I needed both an ice cream maker and a food processor. My intentions were good. I'm doing a hell of a lot of chopping these days to preserve all my organic, local, and home-grown food. And for goodness sakes, all natural ice cream can't possibly be a bad thing, right? But you know what they say about good intentions. In this case, as usual, it's the path to hypocrisy. Two scoops.

Tomatoes!

We went away for a few days, when we came back...taa-daaa!

Walking the Walk...kind of

Earlier this year, I wrote a long rant about birthday parties. I swore that my own kids would have simple parties and we wouldn't even try to keep up with the Joneses. I took a "no loot bags" vow, and a "no presents" vow. That was easy, because neither of my kids had birthdays for at least 6 months into the future. But summer is birthday season in our house, and now I have to walk the walk. The results weren't as hardcore as I'd originally imagined, but we've just had two parties that kept (for the most part) to the spirit of my vows.
My son's was easy. He's just turning 3 and not so indoctrinated with neighbourhood birthday tradition. His birthday isn't until August, but we had a party for him in June to celebrate the beginning of summer with all of his daycare friends. He got it in his head that it was a birthday party, so we made a cake and he was totally satisfied with that. He was the only one who thought it was his birthday, so there were no presents or loot bags. Done.
5 year olds have been on the birthday circuit longer and thus have higher expectations. But we did okay with my daughter's party this weekend. We kept the guest list small, which granted, is easier to do with a summer birthday when school's out and you don't have to worry about too many people feeling left out. We had 6 friends and 1 little sister. Reasonable I think. We had the party at home (unusual in these parts since we all live in tiny houses), we made crafts (tissue paper flowers, beaded bracelets, and ahem, Froot Loop necklaces), we planted flower seeds in pots that the kids could take home, and we busted up some homemade pinatas (yeah, filled with candy- and each kid got a brown paper bag in which to collect their pinata winnings...so I guess that's a loot bag. Ooops). The birthday girl requested a Canada Flag cake, and we had pita pizza with organic dough, and a giant watermelon. All in all, pretty low key, easy, inexpensive and low waste. High sugar though...I'll work on that one for next year.
My favorite idea I found on someone else's blog (sorry, I can't reference it 'cause i forget where I read it), but we requested that instead of gifts each child brought two $2 coins. One for the birthday girl and one for a charity of the birthday girl's choice. At the end of the party, our daughter had $14 to take shopping, and $14 for charity. She chose a summer dress to buy, and after careful consideration, decided to give her charity money to a Conservation agency that works to save habitat for frogs and lizards. A little surprising for me, but hey, it's her choice! We were happy that our recycling bin wasn't full with toy packages and wrapping paper. All in all, the concept was a big hit and got great reviews from the parents involved.
I even got some feedback from parents saying that they are planning to try the 2 toonies birthdays too! Good luck everyone!

Colourful Harvest

This is what I picked from the garden today.

I'm pleased to say that we have been eating salad with our homegrown lettuce, making zucchini bread with our own yellow zukes, and getting totally sick of green beans. Awesome. I'm in awe of my beets, chard, and kale for their productivity and hardiness. The green and purple beans have produced more beans than 3 families could possibly eat, and I'm not sure what I'll do with 40 giant beets...but these are nice problems to have.

The downside is that my expected glut of tomatoes may be smaller than I had hoped. Many of the tomatoes are rotting on the bottom as they ripen (known, I discovered, as blossom-end rot)...but after a bit of research I learned that I only need to add "hydrated lime" to the soil and the problem should disappear. I also had a drainage issue in one of my self watering containers that has a couple of plants teetering on the edge of survival. The soil blight (virus...?) at my "away" garden is spreading and is affecting some of the cucumbers and squash plants. I have no idea what to do about this, but I'm sure the solution is very labour intensive! I kind of hoped that once I planted my little seedlings I could just put my feet up until it was time to pick stuff, but alas, it doesn't quite work like that!

My big step for this week will be buying and beginning to use a composter. Since I live in a city that composts for us, I'm in the habit of just throwing all my food waste into the green bin. But I guess this gardening thing gets under your skin because I now looks at all my peelings and think "what a waste to not have this in the soil".

Anyway, hope everyone is able to eat some fresh, local food this month whether from the garden or the farmer's market.