The Salsa Story

This is one of those stories that just goes from bad to worse. We had oodles and tons of tomatoes this year from our garden. Sounds great until you have to do something with them before you loose them. Believe it or not I still have tons bottled from last year that I haven't used yet so I decided to do something different this year. I have always made fresh salsa but this year I decided to bottle some. I went big on this. Lots and lots of tomatoes. I got a recipe from a friend and got started. I had this whole canner full as you can see. It takes hours for it to cook down so it is safe to steam so it tool me all night after work. During this process I wasn't very careful measuring (apparently) and I ran out of garlic powder so I used garlic salt. Well I like salty so no worries right? Wrong. I bottled 20 pints THEN decided to have some. It tasted ok until I really got into it with the chips this time. Way salty!! This was supposed to be for Christmas and it was yucky salty.
So the next day I opened up all the bottles and dumped them in the canner and started over with a bunch more tomatoes and peppers. I had to go back to the store first and get more onions and lids and everything...I put everything in but the salt this time. It was pretty good but still a little strong and vinegary after cooking for 2 hours. So I had some bottled that was for us and got started on the adding more ingredients for the rest of it. After I added a bunch more tomatoes and peppers etc it dawned on me that I was going to have to cook it for like 2 hours more!! By this time it was about 8pm or so and my little project was getting very old. So in my stupor I turned up the heat to move things along. Well the next time I tasted it there was this lovely smokey flavor. Yup scorched the last batch. Honesty if I make any more salsa in my life time it will be too soon. I have 40+ bottles of the stuff. The smokey stuff is now ours I guess which works out because believe it or not it tastes great and we like that one the best. Maybe some friends will get some of the smokey salsa for Christmas this year.