The harvest continues -Salsa....

Quite a few years ago, our family got on a kick of making and eating salsa by the gallon... literally. For one whole fall, we picked, skinned and stewed several buckets of tomatoes, and tried several internet salsa recipes, along with friends salsa recipes. Some kinds were too spicy, and others too runny. Each time we came up with a recipe to try, we planned a day and everyone took on a job. Stephanie was the pepper chopper, Michelle was the tomato peeler, Terry did the hot peppers and I did the onions. I also did the actually cooking of the salsa, preserving it with whatever method was called for.

That winter, after all the kinds of salsa were made, and tested... and extra tomatoes were picked and frozen whole... Terry and the girls tried them all, one right after the other and determined what they liked and didn't like about each kind.

From that process... Terry came up with a recipe of his own, using good parts of all the salsa batches we had already done.

My favorite recipe belonged to a coworker from years ago, named Julie Lavigne. It was sweet (from using as many apples in it as tomatoes) and it was quite spicy as well. I loved it just the way it was, and didn't need to change anything. Armed with Terry's new recipe, we made a final batch using the frozen tomatoes.

It was perfect.. and became our "Family's Salsa". We called it Terry's Salsa. You would think we could come up with a better name... but hey, some names just happen.!

Every year after that we grew Roma tomatoes and bought all the rest of the stuff. We made several batches of Terry's salsa and one batch of my favorite...

Making Salsa became tradition in house, as much as decorating the Christmas tree. But just like decorating a Christmas tree, once the kids weren't around to help with it, it just wasn't as fun anymore.

We sort of skipped a year, then another and before we knew it, 5 years had gone by since we made any........ but this year we had a terrific batch of roma tomatoes growing, plus Vivian's garden was full of Romas as well. It was time to brew a batch or two.

Michelle's job... which I did...

Terry's job.... the hot peppers....

Stephanie's job... the green, yellow and red peppers.... Terry did those... and he did all the onions.... yipee. We made a triple batch of "Terry's Salsa"... and we never got around to making my Salsa (yet)...

Success... 18 bottles of Terry's Salsa. Not nearly as spicy as we thought it would be.. with all the hot peppers that went in it... but still very enjoyable...