By this time of year, the garden is pretty much done. The corn is gone and the cows have eaten the stalks. The green beans, tired from the heat and dry weather, are shriveled down to just a few stems.
The potatoes and sweet potatoes are finishing up their growing season, and will soon be dug from the ground.
However, the peppers and tomatoes didn’t get the memo that the growing season is about over. These prolific veggies will yield their fruit right up until frost, if you are careful to keep them watered during dry spells.
Unfortunately, by this time, many of us gardeners are just about tired of peppers and tomatoes. We’ve been scalding and sealing them in jars for weeks, if not months, and many of us are just ready to be done with them.
However, I just can’t stand to see good veggies go to waste. Other than just feeding them to chickens and cows, making salsa is a wonderful way to make use of those excess peppers and tomatoes. Salsa freezes very well, so you can have the taste of summer in the dead of winter.
Homemade Salsa
- 4 to 5 large tomatoes, diced
- 1 bell pepper or 2 to 3 banana peppers, chopped, seeded and diced
- Vinegar
- Salt
- 1/2 teaspoons minced garlic
- 1/2 medium onion diced
- 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped fine, optional
Mix together the veggies in a large bowl. Stir well. Add 1 tablespoon vinegar and 1 teaspoon salt. Taste and add a bit more if you like. The nice thing about salsa is that you can make it the way you want it. If you think it needs more of something, just toss it in there. For instance, my family doesn’t care for onion, so I usually leave out the onion or replace it with 1/2 teaspoon onion powder.
Allow the salsa to sit in the fridge for a couple hours before serving to allow the flavors to blend.
By the way, I personally do not care for jarred, commercial salsas from the store. However, making salsa from fresh tomatoes is drastically different from those salsas from the store.
