Salsa, Chickens and PC's, Oh My!

I made some salsa today with my new handy-dandy food chopped! So much EASIER! Did the onions and jalapenos first, only 5 pulls. Then did the beautiful tomatoes from the garden, then the cilantro. Worked great, except for a few of the tiny round tomatoes didn't quite cut. I think it's the shape. Here's my recipe, you can modify for the heat and size of batch-

Nancy's Salsa-

tomatoes- 4 cups, chopped

cilantro- 1 bunch  chopped (I like a lot!)

purple onion-1 diced

jalapeno peppers- 2 or more diced

(with or without seeds, depending

on how much heat you like)

red wine vinegar- 1/4 cup or more (or fresh lime juice)

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt to taste

Chopper worked great!!!

All mixed up

Lunch! I ate 3 little bowls it was so good!



I came home today and 2 of the girls Ellie and Buffy were snuggling the tomotoes. It was cloudy and much cooler today. Nice for them!

I finally upgrade my PC! I added 2 1/2 gig chips to my hard drive. Sounds hard, but Crucial.com has excellent, easy directions for each model. For $50.00 it easily doubled the speed. It was getting so slow........



Too Hot, Great Site

It's been in the 100's this week and it's just too hot. BUT I appreciate my A/C as well, and that I can water my garden without having to stay in the heat afterwards. The dog and hens are so hot. I give the "girls" a pan of ice chips in the late afternoon once I get home from work, and on the weekend. The older one loves them, the 2 younger can't figure out what it's for! I dont' leave the dog out too much, as she's getting a bit older and takes her longer to recover from the heat. Poor Sam.... I also appreciate being out of the way of major storms and hurricanes... and a lot of fires in the area around us in the mountains and rural hills.

Blackberries are really coming in, so I'm freezing some. Once they're all in I'll make some organic blackberry jam. I found one recipe with lime juice, sounds tangy! I'm getting a good, steady supply of tomatoes too. I bought some gourmet pizza dough on the way home tonite, a lb. for $2.00. Made a whole layer of garden tomatoes sliced thin, with lots of herbs, covered with mozzarella, purple onions, kalamata olives, and goat cheese blobs. Topped with fresh basil after it was baked. Amazing! I'm going to use my baby tomatoes, and my new chopper to make some fresh salsa tomorrow. Simple recipe I created, will post with photos...

Apples are getting close too. I decided (for now) I'm going to pick them all, even if they're a bit green, so I can process them over Labor Day weekend. It's a lot of apples. Glad I bought my food strainer- just cook, dump em in, and it sorts out the skins and seeds. A few different screen sizes for variety. It's a Roma brand I think, similar to the big one they sell on Lehman's. I'll post pics when I get into the processing. Will mostly do applesauce, apple butter (love the stuff), and some slices for pies. I decided to do my plain, as I like the option of doing pies, tarts, and apple cakes. Nectarines will be a bit behind, luckily, so will do those when they're ripe. Three weeks maybe??? I don't think I'll have enough jars, ah well... back to the store...

I found this great blog! Mennonite Girls Can Cook  Great recipes and photos. I love their group photo at the top of the page with matching aprons, cute!

And yes, I want this sink! Maybe the kitchen too!!!

Very Funny Perspective On Tech/Books, New Pie from 1915

"It's a Book" Trailer 
I love Lane Smith's books! Funny! And some adults could learn from this too!

I decided to try this as my first recipe from The Lost Art of Pie Making Made Easy-

I used the top recipe, and didn't want to have to write it down, sorry!

I did also add 1 teaspoon of pure orange extract, and a pinch of salt. Anything I bake that calls for sugar gets a pinch of salt if there's none in the recipe. Grandma taught me that.

Thin milk mixture on left, egg whites on right

in the crust ready to bake, kind of a fluffy mixture, not like a custard

Photo of finished pie-

Will let you know how it tastes later, but smells very citrusy...

The pie "done"- a layer of custard about 2/3 the way up, then very moist cake:

 Flavor's very good, maybe a tad too sweet, glad I added the orange extract. My pie pan was 10", so I might do the recipe 1 1/2 xs to top it off. Will make again, very easy! Might do orange juice too...