For anyone that has been following my garden series over the years you might remember my main goal is to grow most of the ingredients for a salsa I like to make. With some conditions changing in the garden and many of the ingredients ready it was time to make the first batch of salsa for the year.

As far as a recipe or extract ingredients go there is not one per se. While it’s something like a Pico de Gallo over the years it’s been added or subjected to find what I enjoy dipping chips into or pouring onto an omelet or burritos.

The exact ingredients also change depending on the quantity available from the garden to meet my goal and what I’m willing to buy. This time around all the cilantro plants that were growing in the herb stackers I have set ended up dying off and I only had a small amount that was growing elsewhere.

I had been putting off making this till the tomatoes were ripened and I had enough of them on a given day. While there was some other stuff from the garden that won’t be ready for a while it was time to go ahead and make the first batch.

Almost everything in the photo above is from my garden. The expectation is the onion. I have 40 or so onions growing in the garden that won’t be quite ready for a while. As such, I had to go store-bought on that front at least for now.

Today I had a few things that were ready to be picked in the garden. Six tomatoes, a scallion, garlic, and a jalapeno. The cilantro has been ready to be picked for a while I just did not have as much as I wanted as I’ve been drying out a bunch of it and was not expecting to lose 80% of those plants in a week.

For how this salsa ends up being made that is more than good enough. Sometimes maybe I’ll toss in two jalapenos. Later in the year maybe I’ll use a purple or yellow or red bell pepper since this year I’m growing those as well. With the cilantro dying out next time I could end up just using parsley. That is in part why enjoy this salsa it can change a bit between batches.

This leaves the rest of the ingredients for the salsa that I more than likely will never be growing or creating an environment to acquire. That being salt, ground black pepper, ground cumin, lime, and a mango. While sure I could attempt to grow a lime and mango tree. Along with boiling ocean water for the salt. I’m not quite that extreme trying to make this 100% homegrown.

I also attempted to deviate from how I usually prepare everything. I wanted to give this food processer a try that I’ve had for a few months now. I thought it would be perfect for salsa. After the onions things quickly went downhill from there. Next time I’ll be sticking to hand-cutting everything even if I don’t get it as fine as I like.

Besides, it’s quicker to hand-cut everything anyways. Things still had to be cut into a small enough size to fit into the food processer. You then have to make sure all of its parts are snapped incorrectly or the blade won’t spin. Then you have cleanup. I guess I’ll have to find another use for it.

Final Thoughts

There it is in all of its glory. I’ll be giving it about 24 hours in the refrigerator before I dive into it. There are already plans in the works to get some freshly made tortilla chips from a local place. If it survives that I could pour this stuff on just about anything and enjoy eating it.

This is as close as I’ve gotten from growing most of the ingredients. Sure I could omit things like the mango. I just happen to enjoy having it in the salsa like a couple of other things. It’s also fun to still have more of a goal to complete for this if ever wanted to take it even further.