salsa (now with pictures!)

Our garden is doing very well lately. I have more tomatoes than I can eat, and Kelsea doesn't eat them plain, so we decided to make salsa. We're also growing peppers that are doing well. After looking at various recipes, and reading the ingredients of our preferred salsa, I decided to combine what I knew I wanted, and make something up. I often cook this way when it doesn't involve bread, cake or cookies. So anyway, we had to buy some jalapenos, an onion, and some limes, which we combined with our bowl full of tomatoes, and one bell pepper. It turned out pretty good, though too spicy (I should have used only one jalapeno). It's nice to be able to do something productive with all those tomatoes.

Incidentally, I purposely got tomato plants that would not produce huge tomatoes. It has been my experience that larger tomatoes take too long to ripen in the desert heat, so they split, go bad, get eaten by insects, or all of the above, before we get to eat any. So this year, I planted 6 roma tomato plants, and one grape tomato plant. The tomatoes we're getting are mostly very small roma tomatoes, or very large grape tomatoes. But we're getting a lot, and they are very good.

Also, our basil is growing like crazy, we're overwhelmed by zucchini (which honestly doesn't take many zucchini), the cucumbers are overwhelmed by the zucchini plants, our carrots are leafy but the roots are still small, the peas have mostly died in the heat, we have one pumpkin that is already turning orange, and five or six watermelons that are gradually getting bigger. I think next year we might have to put in a lime tree to support our salsa habit. We also have some very young grape vines that won't do anything till next year.

So, in the picture to the left, do you see any watermelon? I know there are three that I could see when I took the picture, but in the picture, I can only find one for sure. The largest is about the size of a mini-basketball. We had a watermelons about that size (12 in. diameter?) before we even noticed that there were any watermelons actually on the vine. Then we saw the other four or five all of a sudden. They hide well.