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Grow Tomatoes Journal: Review of Ingredients for 20 Cups of Salsa

July 6th, 2009 | Author: Dot

“Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.”
– Alice May Brock (of Alice’s Restaurant fame)

Eight Pounds of Garden Fresh Tomatoes Made Twenty Cups of Salsa

Dot’s Thot: I guess then, tomatoes, onions, Jalepeno peppers, and cilantro make it Mexican. Garlic certainly does make this good. Anyway, today I decided I couldn’t let the tomatoes stand — having given away several dozen tomatoes already and eating them at least for lunch and dinner and sometimes for breakfast — yum!!

Having made Caprese salad, guacamole, salsa, and eaten them with plain old salt and pepper, I decided to make the first batch of salsa to bottle and save for later. Last year was my trial run — only made a bit, and found that we all liked it. Hence today was salsa batch #1. Last year I made and canned salsa, marinara sauce, and some Indian tomato sabzi. I also skinned and froze a bunch of tomatoes too.

I am not going to tell you how to can tomatoes, because I am still only an occasional canner — there are better sources for that. I will review for you what was used and what happened. If you do can tomatoes, you will probably find, as I have, if you use your own tomatoes and mix them up, the batches may come out differently each time, but no commercially uniform tomatoes will taste quite as good as your own mix of delightful special, vine-ripened tomatoes.

Here is the list of tomatoes that went into the salsa today:

(1) Lemon Boy — 4 oz.
(1) Black Brandywine — 6 oz
(2) Marizol Purple — 6 oz. + 8.5 oz.
(1) Earl of Edgecombe — 5 oz.
(1) Aunt Gertie’s Gold — 7 oz.
(3) Vintage Wine — 4.5 oz.+3 oz. + 2 oz.
(12) Salsa — 6+4+4+4+4+3+4+2+3.5+6+4+4+4 = 52.5 oz.
(1) Golden Pineapple — 11 oz.
(2) Celebrity — 4 oz.+3 oz.
(1) Piriform = 9 oz.
Miscellaneous small tomatoes = 8 oz.

If I added right, that is 133.5 oz. or 8.34 pounds of tomatoes or roughly 8 pounds of some very lovely tomatoes. I did not make this with measurements on the other stuff, but what you see in the photo, all chopped up and mixed with salt and pepper became the salsa. The four Jalepeno peppers (green) were pretty hot and the long red peppers (grew in the yard) are kind of hot. I don’t favor bell peppers in salsa, nor cucumbers (in a canning book).

I like to mix the onions when I can, so used one large yellow and 1 large red onion. I used a whole head of garlic (I like garlic, kim chee, and Korean food — what can I say). I also like green onions in my salsa, so used a whole bunch. I used one large bunch of cilantro and this time used 2 large, extremely juicy limes, although lemons work well also. The rest was salt and pepper to taste.

Finally I followed the canning directions for water bath canning. The result was seven pint jars and four 12 oz. jars of salsa batch #1. If you multiply that out 7X16=112 and 4X12=48 or 160 ounces or 10 pounds or 20 cups of salsa. The jars are cooling (and hopefully all sealing nicely) on the washer top. Tomorrow, I will check the jars, label them and put them away as I go to the next tomato projects.

Aloha, Dot

P.S. If you want to try to identify the varieties, I can tell you this much: Piriform is on the scale. The 4 yelowish tomatoes in the photo are Golden Pineapple on the top, Lemon Boy to the right, Earl of Edgecombe bottom, and Aunt Gertie’s Gold on the left. On the top left between Golden Pineapple and Aunt Gertie’s Gold is the finely striped Vintage Wine (which this season is one of my favorite tomatoes in taste). Right below Aunt Gertie’s Gold is a Black Brandywine, To its right is an arc of various sizes of the Salsa tomato (a mother lode of tomatoes this year — firm, prolific, great in salsa). Sort of nestled in the center is Marizol Purple with a small Celebrity tomato to its left. As for the rest, your guess is as good as mine now.

See Christy K.’s Beautiful Brandywine Tomato — two hands needed

April 16th, 2009 | Author: Dot

Take a look at this whopper of a Brandywine tomato. Brandywines are among my very favorite tomatoes and @Christyku. from the Midwest twittered me this beauty, which a friend gave her. Wow, I can’t believe she ate the whole thing!!!!

Christy K's Brandywine Tomato -- a Whopper!!

Posted in Tweets |

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