Fresh homemade salsa

This is a video of me making my fresh salsa.  Tomatoes have been good this year!  This was the first gallon I made.  We ate all of that and I have since made a second gallon.  It lasts in the fridge for 6 months!
Recipe:
1 gallon of tomatoes, chopped, drained and press (excess liquid through mesh strainer)
1 small bunch cilantro (optional)
1 large red onion, diced
1 fresh cayenne pepper, seeded and diced
5-6 fresh banana peppers, seeded and diced
2 medium bell peppers, seeded and diced
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/8 cup sea salt
1 Tbsp garlic powder (or more to taste)
1 Tbsp ground cumin

Dice all veggies or use food processor to do it for you!
Add vinegar and spices
stir well and refrigerate
ENJOY!


Oh and I forgot, add the juice of 1 freshly squeezed lime!

Fresh homemade tomato sauce

If you are like me, you have a LOT of tomatoes in your fridge.  Either you grew them or you have friends giving them to you.  So many tomatoes and you can not eat them all before they go bad.  You have made BLTs and salsa, and eaten them in salads, had tomato and cheese sandwiches and still have TONS of tomatoes.  What to do with them all?
Can them!  I know this may be a new thing to some or scary to think about, but I have an easy way that you can do this!  Not special equipment needed!
You can use cherry tomatoes, or the big ones, either is fine!
Take about one big stock pot 1/2 full of tomatoes.  If you are using the big ones, core them and cut off any bad spots.
Add them to the pot and turn heat to med high.  Add chopped bell peppers (approx. 3) and chopped onion (1 large yellow), about 5-6 garlic cloves, 1 Tbsp sea salt, 1/4 cup EVOO, and fresh herbs (basil, oregano, thyme, and rosemary) about 1/4 cup of these slightly chopped, stems removed.
cook all of this till veggies are tender.
Let cool a little, then pour into blender or use immersion blender to puree into a sauce.
put sauce back into pot and bring to a boil, then simmer while you get the jars ready.
Fill clean QT or Pint jars with HOT water to get the jar HOT.  The ladle hot sauce into clean empty HOT jars.  Leave a 1" head space, wipe rim clean, screw on a new lid and ringer to hand tight.  Set on a towel on the counter and repeat till you are out of sauce.
Let the jars set until the lids POP and seal.  Then let them continue to set undisturbed 24 hours. Label and date the jars.  If any do not seal, put in the fridge and eat within a week!
ENJOY!!! 


NOTE: if your sauce is watery before you add to the jars, stir in a small can of tomato paste!  Make sure its organic!

Anyone can grow a garden!

I live in a neighborhood outside city limits and on a street that dead ends.  So I kind of feel like I am out in the country a little, yet am close enough to town for all those trips I make in a day!  My neighbor usually grows a pretty big garden, so the 5 years I have lived here, I have just taken what he gives me.  This year I decided that we eat such a variety of vegetables that he does not grow, so maybe I should try and grow those.  Thank goodness for pinterest and all of the great ideas that are out there!
This pin was what I started with: planting my seed in egg shell halves and sprouting them inside first.   http://www.17apart.com/2012/01/how-to-plant-seeds-using-eggshells.html

Then today, I decided to move those seedling that have sprouted on out into my "palette" garden.  This idea came from here:http://www.hometalk.com/146502/our-palette-garden
even though they suggest standing it upright, I am going to keep mine flat on the ground! 

So what have I planted this spring?  Butternut squash, sugar snap peas, broccoli, carrots, bell peppers, Brussels sprouts, kale, lettuce, and spinach.  Those are all in the palette garden.  Then in pots going up my front porch steps are my herbs for cooking.  Basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary,& parsley.  I also have mint that grows around my flag pole and dill that is in the flower bed.  In another flower bed I planted chamomile and in the bed with my blueberry bushes, I planted asparagus.  My strawberries are doing well!  They have so many white buds on them already. 

So how does your garden grow?  I think even if you live in an apartment you could do the palette garden and plants in containers!    Leave me a comment with what all you're growing this year!  For more ideas, follow me on pinterest!  http://pinterest.com/liciajoy/

Spring...what we do around here!

These are pictures of our baby chicks, and butterflies.  Spring is new life, and is always a great time to teach this to children.  For Christmas my girls received a butterfly garden kit.  We sent off for our caterpillars in the mail and received a container with 5 and all the food they needed.  It was a great experiment to watch how fast those little suckers grew.  The miracle of forming the cocoon and how quickly the transformation of change takes place.  We fed them and observed for several days.  Then this week the weather was finally warm enough, so we released them!
The baby chicks are Buff orpingtons.  They are the friendliest breed of chickens, meaning they will come right to you.   I am totally stoked to raise these sweet little girls and enjoy some fresh farm eggs from our own backyard chickens.  Since we eat gluten free around here, recipes call for 3 or more eggs and that means we go through a LOT of eggs!  Hoping this will help me out in cost savings!
Yesterday we also started our seedling garden.  I saw a cool idea on pinterest of starting seeds in half egg shells and then you just plant the whole thing in the ground when ready.  We planted broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots, bell peppers, butternut squash, sugar snap peas, lettuce, kale and spinach.  We also planted herbs, dill, oregano, basil, rosemary, parsley, thyme and chamomile.  We also planted asparagus in our flower bed, although we won't have a harvest the first year, maybe next.  I have a strawberry patch so I got in there and pulled all the weeds and noticed I have several blooms already!  The girls will be excited for fresh strawberries soon.
All that being said, how does your garden grow?  I am going to try growing some things in a pallet garden, also seen on pinterest.
I am also looking for plans to build a chicken tractor.  Any ideas are welcomed!  I need to get to building soon.  The weather here is getting warm and the chicks are growing fast!