I'm Drowning

in papers that I can't bring myself to throw away because... well, what if I need that information again? It's killing me. Really. I've had a copy of Ball's Traditional Salsa recipe on my counter for the last few weeks. I can't seem to throw it away because it has notes from our attempt to find the perfect canned salsa recipe. *B* and I followed this recipe [more or less] to make 18 pints last month. We have 8 left. I guess that should say that the attempt was fairly successful. There are, however, some things that we will definitely do differently next time:

1. We were afraid of the salsa being too hot so we only used half the called for amount of jalapenos. This is apparently not a hot salsa. It wasn't hot at all. When we realized this problem I sent *B* up the street to our good friends garden to get a few more peppers. When he got back we had a good laugh because not a single one of the peppers had even the slightest bit of heat to them. That's what you get for making salsa in the middle of the night. So, BRING ON THE HEAT!
2. Our favorite fresh salsa has a slight smoked flavor to it and in my search for a recipe I ran across a roasted tomato salsa. Hmm... Of course we had to try a small batch. It wasn't good. However, when we mixed a small amount of the real stuff with the roasted stuff it wasn't bad. We dumped the whole batch of roasted into the tradtional. It was okay. The only thing I would do differently there would be LESS OIL! I could totally taste the oil from the roasted vegetables. Surely there is some way to roast vegetables with out having them swimming in olive oil? I will find it next time I want a roasted flavor.
3. We had tons of tomatoes and just started cutting and dumping them into the pot. We had no idea how much was in there. We guesstimated. And we paid the price in a slight lack of flavor. It was still good, but I love flavor. The stronger the better. More cilantro, more onion, more garlic, more, more, more [oh, and of course more salt]! That said, MEASURE THE TOMATOES!
4. Our salsa was very wet. Almost soupy. We squeezed out the middle sogginess and seeds from the tomatoes, but still... wet. I'm thinking DRAIN THE TOMATOES after chopping. I think a cheese cloth over a pan would do the trick fairly nicely. If not, maybe add some type of thickener.
5. Lastly, we were a little wary of the vinegar [at least *B* was... he was truthfully a lot wary] we halved the called for amount. It was probably just right. I do need to find out if the vinegar is necessary for preservation though.

So that's it. One paper down, approximately five million left to go...

Enjoy the Journey!

PS. it's starting to feel like fall! I love crisp, cool mornings. Makes me want to go running...

PSS. If you were wondering, I made the labels for the salsa by tweeking this free download and printing them on regular 2 x 4 sticky address label paper [10 per sheet] using this free template from Avery and then I cut them out. Here's the link to my labels. Enjoy!