Summer's Bounty

Shout out to all tomato lovers! Thankfully, this year's tomato harvest hasn't been a total bust for me like it has for all the commercial growers. Unfortunately, their problems came from a panic and salmonella scare. I had some water, groundhog, and hornworm issues, and grow tomatoes that have smallish harvests, but overall, some pretty good quantities.

The tomatoes I grow are heirloom and some have limited production, but others do just fine for my needs and some have small numbers but big fruits.

I figure you can get standard types in the store and most farm stands, so why not grow the unique and varied heirloom types that have a myriad of flavors and colors. Also, growing without pesticides means more opportunity to be plagued by pests, diseases and fungus. All in a summer's work! I'd rather lose three plants to any of those things than ingest pesticides if I don't have to, right?!

So, today I filmed another segment for LHOV on our local station with Tab. We talked about what to do with all those tomatoes and other abundant produce from your garden.
I made gazpacho, salsa, bruschetta topping and mojitos.

Wait, did I say MOJITO???? Where does that fit in? Well, it's a refreshing Summer libation (that can be alcohol-free if you wish) that makes use of all that crazy, spreading, garden-choking mint!
And I thought it went well with all the things I made.

That may not have been conveyed int he segment, but hopefully nobody minds if it doesn't seem cohesive!

Anyway, here are the recipes for the items I made today. Keep in mind I am not good at measuring and with things like these: salsa, gazpacho, etc., you have to do a lot of it to taste until you get it how you like it. Some people like their salsa mild, some like it screaming hot. Some people like a tart Mojito, some like it super minty and some like it really sweet.

So play with these until you them just right, or have a guinea pig handy to try them out on. That way, if you get the salsa too hot, you don't have to suffer!

Have fun and enjoy and remember, it doesn't have to be PERFECT!!!!!


SALSA!! OLE'!

• 2-4 tomatoes depending on the serving size you would like, diced with peel and seeds


• 1 red onion of medium size, diced


• a bunch of cilantro, torn and chopped (just the leaves)


• 2-4 cloves of garlic, minced and mashed (to get the juices going)


• one 5.5 oz can of low sodium V-8


• 1 -3 sweet bell peppers: I like to use a variety of colors and use about a 1/2 of each one and save the rest for something else. Seed and dice


• 1 jalapeno (seeded and diced) or other hot pepper that's available; you can add heat other ways if they are not available, or use canned minced green chilies


• 1/2 to a tsp. of cumin powder


• 1/4 to a 1/2 tsp. of ancho chili powder


• 1-2 dashes of chipotle chili powder


• pinch to a 1/ tsp. of cayenne


• Jane's Crazy Mixed-Up Salt (in the spice section of your grocery) to taste!


• 2 grinds of fresh pepper (the multi-colored peppercorns are the best)

Mix everything in a bowl. That was hard. Whew. I'm pooped. Pass me a margarita. Okay, so start small on the seasoning and hot pepper amounts and work your way up. Use generous amounts of cilantro and use as much V-8 until you get the consistency you want. I like it chunky, but enough V-8 sauces it enough to hold it all together and get your chip wet without being too watery. Watery salsa is not fun. It's a drag actually, so this solves the problem. And you get your 8 servings of vegetables on a chip and nobody hits you in the head.

If you want to be healthy, there is a yummy multi-grain sea salt tortilla chip out there and Plocky's makes a good one too that is multi-grain, but pricey and found in gourmet stores. Frito-Lay now makes a baked Scoop!, so that's good news for all of us.

The rest of the recipes from this segment will be in the next post!