A Tomato-free Day

It was time to make my salsa.  In the past, I would buy 3 or 4 4 litre baskets of tomatoes and the appropriate number of red and green peppers and onions.  But it never seemed to be enough so I bought a bushel of tomatoes (that's Fucking Heavy in kilos) and 2 half bushels of peppers.  

I spent most of Saturday blanching, peeling, coring, seeding, quartering and chopping 20 kgs of Roma tomatoes, 1 dozen peppers and 5 Spanish onions plus the jalapeno peppers and assorted spices.  I was ready to weep as I put the last of the pickling salt in the pot.  I could not stand to spend another 2 hours with this pot of veg. in order to cook it and can it.  So I chucked it in the fridge and went for a lie down.

Yesterday dawned hazy and humid as I set that bloody salsa on the stove.  I was seriously questioning my decision to make such a huge batch.  It took about 1 hour and 15 minutes to cook to "the desired consistency", which is fairly thick,  and another 30 minutes to put in Mason jars. 



I ended up with 16 500ml jars which isn't bad. 

I still have the other 20 kilos of tomatoes to deal with but I've declared today a tomato-free day.