October 13, 2008

Well, DoubleD suggested that I take the day and relax.  It's been quite a while since I did that, and it will be quite a while before I get a chance to do so again.  So today I stayed inside, played with the kids and went on errands with the family. 

About the only thing I did outside was to finish dismantling the potato bin and once they dried out from the early morning rain, I put them away in the shed.



In a perfect world I would have labled them, but I'll just grab two of each length whenever I need to add a layer.  I love this storage place because it's up over the rest of the shed stuff on an old door the former owner used as a big shelf.  The boards fit perfectly and I can even stick stuff on top of it.  Not bad at all.  I can't wait to find time to organize the shed better. I know I fit things better in it.

I also took the time to can the salsa.  I didn't find anything good in the way of definitive proof of whether or not I could can salsa in a water bath or not, so I went with my mother's experience doing it years ago.  So I re-boiled the previously sterilized pint jars and lids and brought the salsa back to a simmer on the stove.  Once the jars were boiled, I removed them and immediately added the salsa using a ladle and a funnel.  In total I got 4 and 3/4 pints of salsa out of the batch...



Then it was time to clean up the edges, put the lids on and secure the rings.  Finally, back in the water bath for 15 minutes.  Here is a pic of the jars waiting to pop after their sealing bath.



Don't they look grand!?!  They're not as thick as I'm used to, but it's perfect how I like it.  See I don't like onions and such whole.  I don't mind the taste blended up, so that's what I did.  The only chunks in there are my tomatoes diced up and the cilantro coursely chopped. 

Hehe on one of our errands today I bought a bag of tortilla chips just to have with salsa.  Oh, and of the five jars, my brother got one pint, my mother got the partial pint and I have one in the fridge cooling down for chips and the other two in the pantry.  One will go with me to the guy's night out the "girls" set up for the husbands after all their nights out.  The other will go to the family that finishes their jar the fastest... likely my folks since they were planning on having tacos tonight just to use the salsa.  Hehe.  And my father called the salsa mild and me a wimp... bah!

Well, I'm well relaxed and content with where my garden and yard is leading into the week and helping my folks move.  About the only thing I need to do still is bundle a bunch of my corn stalks together and set up a display with the cheap scarecrow we picked up today.  My neighbor always has a festive yard and they don't even have kids.  I'm not one to keep up with the Jones' but the kids deserve some festivity!  Of course I can always do it in the dark on our covered porch.  And the kids are going to a pumpkin patch this week with their school.  Maybe they'll pick one up to round our our display!  Sounds like fun.

Enjoy your garden!