Late August 2024| Practical Self Reliance

Salsa Time! And puppies, geese, and quince, oh my!

Late August is peak season for…well…just about everything here in the north country. All those long-season veggies that we wait all year for come ripe at the same time, and we’ve got 2-3 weeks to enjoy them before a blanket of pumpkin spice overtakes the land.

Right now, we’re focusing on putting up tomatoes, peppers, corn, and eggplant…but the first apples and pumpkins of the season are already starting to roll in.

The freeze dryer’s been running overtime with peppers and eggplant, as those rehydrate really well all winter long. For the tomatoes and peppers though, most of those are going into the new salsa recipes I’m testing this year.

Canning salsa is actually kind of tricky. With all the low-acid ingredients (onion, peppers, etc.), you have to make sure there’s enough acid (lime juice, vinegar, etc.) to ensure that the batch is safe for canning (without being unpalatably sour or vinegary).

Generally, it’s best to stick with tested recipes.

Most canning books have one or two recipes, but until now, I hadn’t found any that I really loved. So this year, I hit the books and pulled out every single tested salsa canning recipe I could find…and I ended up with just over 50 recipes!

I tend to take what my daughter calls the Pokemon approach to new recipes, and once I have them all assembled, I’ve gotta make them all…

So, thus far this year, I’ve made 24 different salsa recipes!

A few have been duds, but most are really darn good, and I’m hoping to have them all posted for y’all before next year’s salsa season. (And I’ll post a list of all of them, and where they can be found, at the end.)

And then, of course, my baby girl looked at me putting up all this salsa, and said, “Don’t forget my pasta sauce mama…”

Which got me wondering…how many tested pasta sauce recipes are there? I’ve found 30 thus far…and maybe I’ll have a good number of those for you, too. (Both for water bath canning and pressure canning.)

In the meantime, here’s what’s on my camera roll from August:

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Some of this past week’s salsa canning batches.

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Say hello to Pancake, the newest member of the family.

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A rainbow of freeze-dried peppers for recipes this winter.

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Baby geese grazing in the summer sun at the beginning of August. At this point, they’re small, but they’ve already tripled in size in just 2 weeks.

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Those same geese just a few weeks later! Geese grow from tiny little fluffs about the size of a grapefruit, to full birds in about 8 to 10 weeks.

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Harvesting Equisetum arvense (Field Horsetail) for a joint pain tincture.

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An adult male silk moth! Last month, I talked about being gifted some silk and silk moth cocoons, and most of them turned into snuggly, squishy-bodied silk moths. After 5000 years of domestication, they’re docile and don’t really fly…and they’re the perfect terrarium pet for curious little ones. They laid a few hundred eggs, so maybe we’ll have home-raised silk soon!

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Homemade roasted tomato basil soup. I’ve had these “stackable” ball jars for a while now, and while I’m not really into stacking jars, I thought they’d be the perfect container for a drinkable soup in a jar. To me, they look like drink cups, and I think they’d work really well as a heat-and-sip-from-the-jar meal for traveling or work lunches.

Seaberry (or Sea Buckthorn) Oxymel in the works. An oxymel is a mix of herb or fruit, combined with equal parts honey and raw cider vinegar. It preserves naturally and extracts the medicinal benefits of the herb. It works well with nutrient-dense and immune-boosting fruits, too, like elderberries. Here, I’m working with our homegrown seaberries, which are one of the best natural sources of Vitamin C in the North Country (and one of the ways people in the Nordics fight off scurvy in the winter months). Add in a little raw local honey and probiotic cider vinegar, and you’ve got a homegrown tonic that’ll give elderberry syrup a run for its money.

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Whole tomatoes canned in red wine. Saving these up for a mid-winter cassoulet.

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Our quince are still a ways off, but they’re developing nicely. We planted this tree 10 years ago, and I’m so excited for our first homegrown quince!

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Yellow tomato butter. Yeah, a weird one, I know. Or at least that’s what I said when I saw the recipe in the Ball Blue Book of Canning. What on earth are you using a tomato butter for? Sandwiches maybe? Is is like a ketcup? The book had no serving suggestions. Turns out, when cooked down into a fruit butter with a bit of honey, yellow tomatoes taste more or less exactly like apricots. So here I have faux apricot butter from a climate that’s perfect for growing tomatoes but definitely won’t support real apricots anytime soon. So much for a savory sandwich spread; this one’s a surprisingly sweet treat!

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A flight of cucamelon pickles. These tiny little watermelon-shaped cucumbers work incredibly well as novelty pickles, and you can use just about any recipe you’d use for regular pickles. They’re extra fun on a plate, and they have A LOT more natural flavor than regular cucumbers, so they bring their own flare to the jar.

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Southwestern Vegetable Soup from the Ball Blue Book. When I finally put a pause on canning salsa recipes, I still had a bit of everything ingredient-wise…and I spotted this recipe that uses a touch of just about everything you’d put in salsa. Corn, peppers, tomatillos, tomatoes, garlic, onions, and more. The flavor is amazing, and there’s definitely going to be a few more canner batches of this one. It doesn’t have any protein in the jar, but I canned up beans separately, and I heat one jar of soup with a jar of home-canned beans in the same pot and then serve it with tortilla chips and sour cream.

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What are you working on, harvesting, or just plain excited about in late summer?

Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

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Ps. Here’s every salsa canning recipe I can find:

Classic Tomato Salsa Canning Recipes

• USDA's Your Choice Salsa Recipe - This recipe allows you to develop your own salsa recipe, using whatever peppers/onions you'd like, provided you stay within the proportions provided.  It's acidified with lemon or lime juice, and the result is an onion and pepper-heavy salsa that you can adjust to your own tastes.

• Mild Jalapeno Salsa - This recipe has just 1-2 jalapenos for a 6-pint batch and comes out quite mild.  The lime juice adds enough acidity for canning, without being overwhelming.

• Spicy Jalapeno Salsa - With equal parts tomatoes and diced jalapenos, this salsa has more jalapenos than any other recipe out there.  It has great jalapeno flavor and plenty of heat.  (From Ball Book of Canning & Ball Blue Book)

• Simple House Salsa - This quick and easy salsa is much like the "house" salsa I enjoyed at Mexican restaurants growing up in California.  The tomatoes are cored and seeded, but not peeled, so the recipe comes together quickly and you get a bit more texture in your finished salsa.  Everything is just chopped, mixed, and ready to go. (From the Ball Book of Canning, pg. 208)

• House Chipotle Salsa - A variation on the house salsa above, but spiced with chipotles in adobo.

• Table Salsa - This recipe is very similar to the simple house salsa above.  (From the Joy of Pickling)

• Fresh Salsa - From the Ball Canning website, this salsa uses green onions (scallions) for a unique twist.  It gets much of it's heat from added hot sauce rather than peppers, which means it uses less added acidity to safely can the peppers.  (From the Ball Canning website)

• Spicy Tomato Salsa - With both jalapenos and dried chili peppers of your choice, this recipe packs a good bit of heat while still being mostly tomato based.  (From the Ball Blue Book)

• Tomato Salsa with Tomato Paste (thickened salsa) - Developed by the University of Georgia Extension, this salsa adds tomato paste to a thickened salsa similar to what you find in the grocery store.  You get hearty salsa flavor without cooking the tomatoes down too much, so there's still great tomato texture, too. (From the NCHFP)

• Summer Garden Salsa - With slicing tomatoes as its base, this recipe also adds tomato paste to thicken up the mix.  That allows you to use fresh garden tomatoes even if you're not growing paste or Roma varieties.This salsa is similar to the NCHFP tomato paste thickened salsa, but it uses white vinegar instead of citrus juice and quite a bit more onion and peppers.  (From The Ball Book of Canning)

• Tomato Salsa with Paste Tomatoes - This recipe from the University of Georgia relies on naturally thick paste tomatoes to give you good hearty texture without added tomato paste.  (From the NCHFP)

• Tomato and Hot Pepper Salsa - With extra peppers, this recipe has a lot more crunch than most tomato-based salsas.  Use hot or sweet peppers to regulate the heat.  (From the NCHFP)

• Tomato Pepper Salsa - Canadian Living Test Kitchen

• Tomato and Green Chili Salsa -

• Salsa Ranchera (Roasted Tomato Jalapeno Salsa) -

• Roasted Tomato Chipotle Salsa -

• Salsa Roja (Roasted Tomato Ancho Chili Salsa) -

• Roasted Tomato Guajillo Salsa - (From the All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving)

• Spanish Red Pepper Salsa - From the Complete Preserving Book by the Canadian Living Test Kitchen.

• Zesty Salsa - It seems like ball canning used a thesaurus and found "zesty" means spicy, and used it to name everything.  Try their "zesty" pickles too!  This one's a medium to spicy salsa.

• Fiesta Salsa -  They only salsa recipe out there that includes cucumbers!

• Peppy Salsa - A pepper-heavy salsa with dried paprika for even more pepper flavor.  (From Canadian Living Test Kitchen)

Corn Salsa Canning Recipes

• Corn and Tomato Salsa - From the All New Ball Book, it's actually titled corn and cherry tomato salsa, but you can make it with any tomatoes.

• Southwestern Corn and Tomato Salsa - From the Joy of Pickling, and its' actually called "Corn and Tomato Relish," but when I made it, it just screams salsa.  There's a fine line between a relish and a salsa, both have a lot of the same ingreidents, and the main difference is that a relish tends to have more vinegar.  In this case, that works, because it makes the corn safe for water bath canning.

• Peach and Corn Salsa (no tomatoes)- This one's from Ball canning, and it is one of my favorites (yes, from this whole list, I think I might love this one the most).

Green Tomato & Tomatillo Salsa Canning Recipes

• Green Tomato Salsa Verde - A fun way to use up those green tomatoes at the end of the season. (From the All New Ball Book)

• Chipotle Tomatillo Salsa - Just a few ingredients come together to make a spectacular salsa due to the smokey complexity in chipotle peppers in adobo.  (From the All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving)

• Tomatillo Habanero Salsa - With roasted tomatillos, lime, and a few habanero chilis, this salsa has an incredible depth of flavor and is one of my favorite tomatillo salsas.  (From the All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving)

• Tomatillo Salsa - Ball Canning's take on a simple tomatillo salsa.  (From the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving)

• Tomatillo Green Salsa - Made with tomatillos, long green chilis, and Mexican oregano, this salsa is all green in a good way.  (From the NCHFP)

Fruit Salsa Recipes (With Tomatoes)

• Summer Fruit Salsa with Honey and Balsamic - Kind of a strange mix, but it really works! (From the Ball Blue Book)

• Pineapple Mango Salsa (with Tomatoes) - The tomatoes are really just an after thought in this recipe, and mostly give it color.  It's really tropical fruit forward.

• Mango Jalapeno Salsa (with Tomatoes) - From the Canadian Living Test Kitchen

• Fire Roasted Tomato and Peach Salsa - The peaches add a lovely fruity sweetness, combined with the smokey flavor from the roasted tomatoes.

• Peach Apple Salsa (with tomatoes)- Apples provide a bit of sweetness in this one from the University of Georgia Extension.

• Plum Habanero Salsa (with Tomatoes) - This salsa can be made with any stone fruit, not just plums, but it's especially delicious with fresh plums in season.  (From the Ball Canning Website)

Fruit Salsa Recipes (Without Tomatoes)

• Mango Chipotle Salsa - (From The All New Ball Book of Canning)

• Green Mango Salsa - The mangoes aren't really "green" they're just hard ripe, so they have plenty of mango flavor but they hold their shape in this salsa.

• Underripe Peach Salsa - This recipe is actually a variation of the green mango salsa above.  Instead of using firm, slightly underripe mangoes, you use firm peaches.  It has an amazingly unique spicy sweet flavor from brown sugar and ginger.

• Peach Salsa - From the Ball Complete Book of Preserving

• Peach Chili Salsa - From the Ball Blue Book of Preserving

• Sour Cherry Tequila Salsa - (From The All New Ball Book of Canning)

• Spicy Cranberry Salsa -

• Papaya Pineapple Chili Salsa - From the Ball Blue Book of Preserving

• Pear Pepper Salsa - Bernardin Guide to Home Canning

• Carmelized Pineapple Habanero Salsa - (From The All New Ball Book of Canning)

Vegetable Salsa Recipes

• Carrot and Pepper Salsa - Including both tomatoes, peppers and carrots, this one is sure unique!  (From the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving)

• Habanero Carrot Butter - This one's actually more of a hot sauce or a savory sandwich spread, but it works well as a salsa too. (From The All New Ball Book of Canning)

• Jicama Salsa - A unique crunchy salsa using jicama from the University of Georgia Extension (From NCHFP).

• Eggplant Salsa - From the Complete Preserving Book by the Canadian Living Test Kitchen.