Harelipfrog

Monday, September 19, 2005

Salsa fell through

No matter how good the plan is, sometimes they fall through, and ours did. The great Salsa weekend we had planned fell to my wife's desire to build her computer. So she did..with a certain ammount of cursing at it and me.

Ideq 200N small frame form(free)
AMD Athlon XP 3200(150$)
1024 Ram(100$ before rebate)
160 GB internal hard disk(100$)
CD-CDRW drive(40$)
3.5 floppy/5 card reader drive(60$)
19 Inch Dell Monitor(250$)
Logitech wireless flat ergonomic keyboard(free)
Logitech wireless mouse(free)
Windows XP(60$)
Microsoft office(50$)
Lots of free security programs

So she is sitting in there enjoying her computer while I'm without any new salsa.

Friday, September 16, 2005

Tomorrow more Salsa

Saturday morning we plan on going back to the farmers market and purchase the following.

50 lbs of Tomatoes(maybe Roma tomatoes)
10 lbs of Yellow onions
5 lbs of Sweet peppers
5 lbs of green and red bell peppers

This is the basis of a basic Salsa recipe we found in an ortho "how-to" book on pickling.

There is only one problem. There is a habit we have of when we go to the farmers market we see so many possibilities and end up with way to much. So hopefully(knock on wood) we get only what we need.

Rainbow of food

I thought you might like to see what a lot of our relatives will be getting for Christmas.

Example

We plan on giving several each in a basket full of jellies, pickles, and Salsa. we might even throw in some small dry cheeses or sausages.

The gift baskets will mainly be for the adults. Kids will still get the same plastic crud that they expect.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

The grapes of wrath Jelly

Welcome to another post on the canning goodness of our weekends.

This is a two parter as I did not post what we canned last weekend to my eternal shame.

Last weekend we decided to do some Salsa. We got a great deal on tomatoes at the farmers market so we picked up two 25 pound boxes of ripe tomatoes.

By the time we were done Monday night we had 33 quarts(8 gallons plus) of Salsa using three basic recipes.

Example

We ended up with a spare half pint and I have already eaten it all. That stuff is great on basic rice and better then the store bought crud.

That was the weekend before last. This weekend we did grapes. Specifically a basic grape jelly recipe.

First you start with a pile of concord grapes.

Example

We tried to use the hand press but the seeds made it pretty impossible. So I simply dug in and crushed them by hand. I offered to stomp on them the old fashion way but my wife said no.. She's spoiled in my view.

Example

So with the grapes mushed I then took an electric hand blender and ran that through the mush to finish breaking it up.

The recipe itself is simple, and my wife will post it soon. But with more then a double batch we ended up with a full case of pints jars and a small jar in the fridge for usage now.

Example

Now I'm a strange bird so when I saw all of this grape mush after we drained the juice off I had an idea. My dear wife volunteered one of her older white shirts and we buried it in grape mush. I added a little water and the next day we went from white to grapey.

Example

The shirt right now is drying to help the stain set. I will wash it later tonight and post pictures in the future. Not exactly tie-dye, but close.