fresh salsa

Well, the baby was due 2 days ago, but I am still pregnant. I've got nothing but time on my hands right now while we're waiting for his arrival. I am on my fourth book of the week (I've read The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Night by Elie Wiesel, and I just started And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. They've all been good, but I especially recommend The Book Thief), and today I decided to pass some time by making some delicious fresh salsa. I love the stuff, plus one old wive's tale is that spicy food will help bring labor on. We'll see about that...

Back in the day, I worked at the Creamery on Ninth for a semester, and every week we'd make fresh salsa. I made it so many times that I remembered the recipe pretty well and wrote it down for later use. The original recipe starts with 30 pounds of tomatoes, so I obviously have to scale it down, but as it turns out, dividing it by 6 keeps pretty easy amounts. One exception, though, is the cilantro. The original recipe simply called for one bunch, and 1/6 of a bunch is kind of a ridiculous amount, so I'm just leaving it at "to taste."

Also, it had been several years since I've made this recipe because it always took so long to chop up this many vegetables and I rarely have a reason to make this much salsa. But today I decided to use my blender for the chopping, which saved me SO much time. It only took about a half hour from start to finish. It did, however, also make the salsa far less chunky than I would ideally like, but the amount of time and energy it saved are definitely worth it.

Ingredients:

• 5 pounds tomatoes
• 1 green pepper
• 1 anaheim pepper
• 1/3 red pepper
• 2 jalapeño peppers
• 1 onion
• cilantro to taste
• 4 tsp. lemon juice
• 4 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. seasoning salt
• 1 tsp. minced garlic
• 2 tsp. black pepper

Directions:

• Chop vegetables.
• Combine all ingredients.
• Enjoy!
• Store in the refrigerator.