Salsa Experience

Crab-Mama has gone insane, in case I have not mentioned this before. She is canning everything she can get her hands on. It is crazy. In the middle of the summer, she canned 42 jars of strawberry jam. Then a few weeks ago, she canned a b*tt-load of blueberries. Then a mountain of peach jam. Well, when we got home from our vacation, there had been a tomato explosion in our garden. Something like 45 kilo-tons of maters ripened while we were away. What to do with this many tomatoes? Easy - can them!

So, she made a lot of tomato sauce, some pureed tomatoes, then went out on a limb and made some catsup. That was insane. Do you know how many tomatoes you need for one pint of catsup? Something like a million. Then you boil and boil and boil until it gets down to a paste. After 3 hours of slaving, she got one pint. You could say that she was rather disappointed. I am not sure when we will ever use it, since it is like gold to her now. I can envision the dinner table conversation, when Crab-girl slathers the catsup on her fries - "That's too much! Do you know how long it took me to make that! Jesus-H-Christ!" (what does the "H" stand for anyways???) Anyways, it tasted good, so I am going to try to get her to make more.... Or not....

Next, we decided to try Auntie-Crab-1's recipe for salsa. (Well, I didn't decide. I am not the decider. I am the follower.) We end up having almost everything to go into the salsa, except some of the hot peppers, so we go to the farmers market and get some there. We then figure out the Auntie's recipe calls for some dried peppers, but we only had fresh peppers. I say that it is all right, call Auntie up to check, she says it is ok, but the dried peppers are more intense and concentrate the flavor more, so Crab-Mama decides that we have to do this. Everything is put on hold while we dry out some of the peppers in the brand new-to-us, slightly used, food drier thingy. The next day, we pick up where we left off and make a bunch of salsa. Did you know that salsa is like a fine wine? It has to age for a while before it is good? Auntie says at lease a month. A month? I can't wait a month! I want to try the salsa that we made now! Crap! Did you know that you can go to the store and get salsa and eat it in seconds after to pick it up from the shelf? Man, this waiting crap is for the tree-huggers. What I want to know is if you make a nacho cheese dip with homemade salsa and Velveeta, will I go to Hell?

Crab-Mama planted a few stalks of corn in the garden a few months back, and it is starting to produce ears. Well, three ears to be exact. And at different times. We picked 2 and put them in the fridge. Then the other day, we picked another ear and decided to see if the rumor that corn is best within 30 minutes of being picked is true. Holy crap - it is! The ear that she just picked was the best corn we had ever tasted! The other two ears, picked a couple days back, were complete crap compared to the super fresh corn.

Fresh veggies have taken over our lives! Someone help!