Foodie Friday: Let's Salsa!

As I posted yesterday I have a plethora of tomatoes and green peppers.  I managed to find some time today to utilize as many veggies as I could.

You can see in the picture just how many tomatoes, peppers and onions there are. (4 boxes of tomatoes)

So here's what I did to make salsa today.

First the easiest way to skin tomatoes..... heat up some water.  It doesn't need to be boiling, just nice and hot.  Simmer the tomatoes for about 1-2 minutes each and remove the tomatoes from the water and into another bowl.
(You can also submerge them in cold water to keep them from cooking in the heat after you've removed them.)

Next, undress the tomatoes.   Sorry, I just had to say that. It was running through my head while peeling the tomatoes, because the skins came off as easy as taking a t shirt off on a hot day.

I used most of the tomatoes for the salsa, but saved a good amount to make spaghetti sauce as well. (Told you I have a lot of tomatoes!)

*  7 cups of chopped tomatoes
*  3 cups of chopped peppers (all mild- just whatever came in my weekly delivery)
*  2 cups of chopped onions
*  10 chopped garlic cloves

All of these chopped as fine as I could.  My technique definitely improved as I continued to chop.

peppers, onions, garlic (before tomatoes)

Place all ingredients in a pot and cook over low to medium heat.  I don't recommend boiling, but just heating up to incorporate all the flavors  and cook the peppers until soft..

I intended to only cook for about 15-20 minutes, but I went and ate dinner.  So it cooked for about 35-40 minutes.... oops. Like I said though, keep it on low-medium heat.  Luckily it wasn't ruined at all.

 Season to taste. I added the following:  (ALL Measurements are approximate - cooking is always an experiment for me :)  )

*  1 teaspoon pepper
*  3 teaspoons salt
*  1 Tablespoon garlic powder
*  1 small habanero pepper, finely chopped
*  1 packet of domino's red peppers ( you know that stuff that comes with pizza that no one uses :)  )

Looks pretty good if I do say so myself.  I have small canning jars that  I plan to put it in and then freeze. (They are freezable) This is because I'm still not confident enough for true canning.  I can't wait to try this out on chips!

This made about 6 cups of salsa, and took me about 2.5 hours to make.  Most of that time was prepping the veggies....