Salsa Day 2…

.. Whew!… is the word I think best sums up the day. We are exhausted. We finished the entire pile of salsa today. We now have 95ish litres of Salsa.

It feels good to be done today, so we don’t have to do anything tomorrow. We started at 11am with the first 2 batches of mild, and by the time Grampa came over at noon they were ready for jarring. We proceeded straight into 3 more batches of mild and 2 of medium. Grampa brought over his outdoor cooker so we could have a double batch in the big soup pot and a regular batch going out on the deck and 2 pots going inside on the stove.

It is quite a process. The Hot peppers get chopped up whole (minus the stems) in the food processor then dumped into the tomatoes as soon as they start cooking.

Then we wait until the pot starts simmering, once it does we basically do everything else on the clock. At 30 minutes past the start of simmer, we add the green peppers and Onions, as well as the tomato paste.

Here is Grampa frantically trying to keep up with the batches (there were 12 batches cooked in all today).

Chopping the green peppers and  onions take the most time I think.

Traci and Grampa did a great job at that. I was busy stirring all afternoon as you can’t leave the pots for very long or the salsa will burn. This proved challenging as I was alternating from the kitchen to the deck outside…

at 45 minutes past the start of simmer, we scoop a bit out and stick it into a waiting bowl in the freezer, and at 55 past the start of simmer we taste test the sample. If it’s too mild we add peppers, if it’s too hot… too bad sucker! a glass o’ milk asap!

Sanitizing the jars is a big project on it’s own, there was a point were we had no more room anywhere in the kitchen and dining room. Once we got started cooking though, room starts to free up.  

We finished all the cooking at 6pm, just in time for the Chinese food to arrive. You’d have to be crazy if you thought any of us would be cooking after the last 2 days slaving over the stove…hehe. Once we finished supper and had Andrew and the donks settled down we were able to get started with the canning and sealing. 

The canning and sealing is not hard, just monotonous. Mind numbing to be more specific. It is a lot of little scoops into the jars, boy oh boy. That is a 30 liter pail, that we are filling into mostly 500ml jars. that take 3 scoops each to fill. so, math wizards, haw many scoops is it? per pail? X 4 pails? wowee, me thinks.

At least when we are cooking we are moving around a bit where the scooping is standing in once place for a long time. But, like all the other tasks, it got done, and done well.

While Traci looked after Andrew, Dad and I finished up the Salsa day. Dad went home once the last jars wire in the canner, at about 9:30.      

We really like our Salsa. The recipe is one we found in a bag of peppers 7 or 8 years ago, and we just love it, also, we have learned a few tricks over the years to make it even better. We tried store bought salsa a while and it was horrible. Too salty, yuck. Anyway, we should be good till at least next spring now. In January, when we are feasting on some very tasty Nachos featuring our salsa I won’t remember how much my feet hurt back on Aug 2, 2009…