Salsa Time!

Making salsa was a family experience this year.  My oldest daughter, Michelle, and boyfriend, Dan, became my very capable assistants.  Our family loves to laugh together and made it a much easier tasks than when I stand alone.  My other daughter, Bessy (you can call her Lizzy), didn't get her hands into the mix but hung out with us while working on a clothing class project.  This is a perfectly acceptable substitute to helping in my book.

We started the night with supper made with fresh ancho peppers from the garden for my first batch ever of Chili Rellonos.  I am not a fan of frying and decided that the very versatile crescent rolls would be thinly stretched around the stuffed peppers to hold the filling in as well as add a bit of coating like you would have with batter dipped and deep-fried recipes.  The vote was unanimous that it work out great and the flavor was perfectly complemented by a batch of lemon-cilantro rice Dan cooked up as our side dish.  Our only complaint was that 8 was not enough for 5 grown people.


Canning is a pretty labor intensive process and making salsa to can is probably 3 times the effort.  Besides blanching and dicing tomatoes by hand (food processors are too uneven and go too fine), we also do up onions, garlic, hot peppers, cilantro, lime with additional seasonings to round it off.  I like to use my Celebrity tomatoes and Roma tomatoes half and half.  The first adds the most flavor and the second adds the most "meat".  I also thicken with canned tomato paste.  If it's good enough for Newmann's, it's good enough for me.  I don't like to cook down the tomatoes to thicken as they loose too much of their body and get too saucy.  Tears were shed over onions and gloves were utilized for the peppers but we made it through.

 This was the first time one of my girls stuck through the whole process and both Michelle and Dan were able to learn the finer points of filling jars, cleaning rims, adding sterile lids, and dropping them into the processor.  Even putting on the screw bands is something best learned by being with someone who has done it before. The whole processes took us about 4 hours but we now have 14 pints and 14 half pints on the canning shelves for the next year's use.  We each had a quart of left overs to use fresh, and Dan took another quart to share with his family over the long, holiday weekend.  


Now that the salsa is done, I have the hardest job of my harvesting season put away.  The vines are still heavy with tomatoes which are still ripening.  This will be the first year in recent memory that not only will I have made salsa with all my own home-grown tomatoes, but I will also be able to can whole tomatoes and tomato juice for the first time in many years.

Working through the process of blanching, peeling, chopping and canning always reminds me of those hot summer nights that my mom worked at filling our basement shelves each year.  She would get in lugs of peaches and we would blanch and peel until our hands were like prunes.  When Michelle stepped away for a few minutes for that reason it reminded me of arms itching from peach juice running down them.  


We spent endless hours snapping beans, saucing apples, and scrubbing the pickling cucumbers.  It all seems like so much extra work!  Until you put up a few of your own veggies and fruits, you will never know the satisfaction of going into your pantry or basement and looking at the gleaming jars filled with good things to eat in the middle of a winter storm.  When the sun streams through the glass block on the late afternoons, the jars are like gems sparkling on the shelves.  


Start with something easy like jams and jellies.  The fruit pectin packages have the recipes right in them and it will be a small investment in canning jars and seals.  If you follow the instructions for turning the jars over when they are hot to seal them, you won't even need a canning kettle.  Fruits are the next easiest item as are pickled items as they also just need a water bath canner to sterilize and seal them properly and safely.  Vegetables are lower acid and need to be pressure canned so the temperature gets high enough to kill any microbes.  Water boils at a higher temperature under pressure.  It may sound intimidating but it really isn't.


If picking up jars at rummages and auctions, make sure to run your finger around the stop lip of the jar.  It should be smooth with no nicks or cracks.  Don't try using these jars for long term preservation as they may seal when you can them but the lid might slowly let air in and spoil your food.  Save these jars for putting in dried foods as they don't need to be completely air tight.  Some sites will say water bath canning is out but that has been debunked by experts.  People have been doing it for a long time with no ill effects.  Do follow the above rules for vegetable though.  Always use new lids when canning.  Even if the old ones came off with no bends, do you really want to risk having the rubber seal fail and lose the food?  Use these for sealing your dried foods if you save them instead of recycling them.   


If you feel daunted read up, take a class or find a friend to teach you.  It is such a wonderful skill to have and the rewards are big!