Salsa! Salsa!

I found my camera cord!!  I searched EVERYWHERE and I finally found it.  What a relief, I was almost out the door to buy a new one when I looked once more and there it was.  Thank goodness!  Ok, so few weeks ago my Mom's friend Sharon gave us a huge bag filled with beautiful hot peppers.  Her and her husband have a backyard garden of peppers and tomatoes and they can there own salsa and tomato sauce.  They picked one of there last crops and gave some to us knowing how much Ryan likes spicy things. 

What a variety! I still am not sure of all the types of peppers, but I know for sure there are jalapenos,  hot cherry peppers, and habaneros. 

Here is the base recipe we used for the salsa, we made three batches so as we got more comfortable with the process we added a few things here and there.  

Fresh Vegetable Salsa

8 Jalapeno peppers

7 cups prepared tomatoes (7-8 Med-large or 2 lbs.) *We used canned tomatoes

2 cups coarsely chopped onions

1 cups coarsely chopped green peppers

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 can tomato paste *12 oz. size

3/4 cup white vinegar

1/2 cup loosely packed cilantro

1/2 tsp. cumin

Combine all the ingredients in a large saucepan and bring to a boil gently about 30 minutes or until salsa reaches desired consistency. 

Our first batch we kept the the ingredients and instructions of the recipe.  I did all of the chopping but I made sure I wore gloves when chopping the hot peppers.  The first batch was super spicy, so spicy I didn't even taste it (I know I'm a wimp) but Ryan and his parents (our tasters for the evening) said it was spicy even for them so I know I probably wouldn't enjoy it. 

 

The second batch was my batch (non-spicy) and we added black beans to the recipe.  I love salsa with black beans and corn but I accidentally bought creamed corn instead of regular corn.  Boooo.. so that was a bummer, but we soldiered on and just used the black beans.  To make a non-spicy version I didn't' use any of the hot, hot peppers, I just used the green bell peppers and one jalapeno just for flavor.  

The third batch was another spicy version but we toned down the spice and a bit and added black beans.  Ryan added paprika to this batch for a bit more heat and we also added the black beans. 

The salsa turned out great and it was a great to use fresh peppers from a local garden. In fact, all of the ingredients were from local farms in Sandusky.  Yay for buying local!