MMMmmmm salsa!

Okay, so the salsa didn't get made Monday. Life (and dawdling students who shall only be known as #s 1-3) interfered. So it goes...

Yesterday, however, I had some fresh tomatoes that *had* to be used. Nothing like a strainer full of gonna-go-bad-soon tomatoes sitting on the counter to make sure you get things moving along in the salsa direction.

I need at add an addendum to yesterday's post. While, apparently, the recipe is "supposed" to make 8 quarts, it does, in fact, only make 4. I have not quite figured out why the discrepancy. But there it is.

Using far more tomatoes for far less salsa, is a very disappointing outcome. And, since our Romas, while fine producers, still only made small tomatoes, I need bigger ones, with less seeds, and water, than a Big Boy, or a Beefsteak. But finding those traits in a sauce/paste tomato is hard. Especially as we prefer to use heirlooms, or at least, non-hybrid, varieties. I actually prefer Romas in salads, as well, since they have far less "goop" (a highly technical term, I know, lol), than the slicers. And since we eat far more salads, salsa, and homemade tomato soup, than we do BLTs, well, it seemed a no-brainer to plant strictly Romas this year. Seventy something of them. Mulched/top dressed with some nice composted chicken bedding from our coop. And even some compost tea (cow 'patties' in a cart, left in the rain for a week. Lovely stuff. Worked wonders on those plants that got it!). But still....while producing large numbers of tomatoes is great, when they are about the size/length of my thumb, well, it is a downer...



Next year, we've already planned to go ahead and plant *some* beefsteak variety tomatoes. We're not sure which kind...something heirloom, I am sure. But we will have to see how things progress and evolve between now and then.



So, if anyone is reading this, did *you* garden this year? Put a tomato in a pot on your apartment balcony? Or seriously go out and till up part of the side/back yard for some cucumbers, tomatoes, and watermelons? How did your garden do? I ask because I noticed a much larger number of small gardens around this area, and am just wondering if that seems to be the pattern elsewhere. Living in my own secluded little piece of heaven, I don't get to see much of the goings-on out and about, unless it is on FoxNews, or the Drudge Report..