Recipe: Small Batch Spicy Salsa

Even the best store-bought salsas don't hold a candle to homemade. It was my goal this year to make some of my own. Because it was a last minute project, I was only able to make a small batch, but I think it will get me by for a while. This salsa is pretty spicy, so use peppers that you can handle.

Recipe is adapted from the Ball Canning and Recipes website.

Ingredients:
5 c. (about 9 medium) tomatoes
2 ½ c. (3 medium) green bell peppers
2 ½ c. (4 small) onions
1 ¼ c. chili peppers (about 7 jalapeños)
2 cloves garlic
1 TBS. cilantro
¾ c. apple cider vinegar
1 ½ tsp. salt

First, remove the skins from the tomatoes. To do this, place the tomatoes in a pot of boiling water for 30-45 seconds.

Then, transfer immediately to a tub of cold water.

Score the tomatoes with a knife and the skins should peel right off. Cut the stem and any bad spots from the tomatoes, then cut into pieces about the size of apple slices. Squeeze some of the water out of the tomatoes over the sink; the water would have to be cooked out anyway.

Chop the green bell peppers...

the onions...

and the chili peppers. Any type of chili pepper will do, just use what your family can handle. I used a combination of jalapeños, habaneros, and cayennes. It's pretty spicy! Remove some seeds and membranes from the peppers to cut back on the heat.

Chop two cloves of garlic and a tablespoon of fresh cilantro.

Throw everything in a large pot with the apple cider vinegar and salt and bring it to a boil, stirring often.

Once the ingredients have come to a boil, turn the heat down so that it boils gently. Continue to stir occasionally. At this point, you can use an immersion blender to break it up. If you want your salsa chunky, it only needs a couple of pulses. I like my salsa smooth so I just put the blender in and let it go to work!

Let the salsa cook for an additional 10 to 20 minutes, until it has cooked down and reached a consistency you're happy with. Have your canning jars, lids, and rings sterilizing during this time.

Ladle the salsa into the hot jars, wipe of the rims, and attach the lids and rings.

Process pints and half-pints in a water bath canner for 15 minutes. When done, remove and let the jars sit undisturbed for 24 hours, then check that the lids have sealed.

This recipe yields 3 to 4 pints or 6 to 8 half-pints. I got 1 pint and 6 half-pints from my batch.

Once the seal has broken, store the salsa in the refrigerator for about 10 days. If you're not into canning, you can also store this salsa in the freezer.

Recipe: Small Batch Spicy Salsa

Recipe: Chicken Gyros on Whole Wheat Pita

This post was originally featured on the Grain Mill Wagon.

Making whole wheat pita provided my first opportunity, ever, to grind my own grain. I chose pita because I knew the flour would be fresh and soft, resulting in a pliable bread. Grinding grain was fun, easy, and it smelled so good!

Ingredients for Whole Wheat Pita:
1 pkg. (2 ¼ tsp.) active dry yeast
1 TBS. honey
1 ¼ c. warm water
¼ c. extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp. salt
3 c. soft white wheat flour (about 2 ½ c. wheat berries)

Ingredients for Chicken:
4 chicken thighs
2 cloves garlic
1 lemon, juiced
1 ½ tsp. apple cider vinegar
2 TBS. extra virgin olive oil
2 TBS. plain Greek yogurt
1 TBS. dried parsley
¼ tsp. pepper

Ingredients for Tzatziki:
1 small cucumber
1 c. plain Greek yogurt
½ lemon, juiced
1 TBS. extra virgin olive oil
¼ tsp. garlic powder
¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. pepper

To a large bowl, add the active dry yeast, honey, and warm water. Wait about 10 minutes for it to get foamy. Meanwhile, grind soft white wheat berries into fresh flour.

Add the extra virgin olive oil, salt, and freshly ground flour into the bowl of yeast water. Stir until it all comes together.

Cover the bowl with a warm, damp towel and let it rise for one hour. After one hour, move the dough onto a clean surface and knead for 5 minutes, until it's smooth.

Rub oil on the dough ball and put it back in the bowl, cover it with the damp towel, and let it rise for another hour. Then, take the dough out and divide it into 8 equal size balls.

Roll out each ball into a small disk. Cover the pitas with a clean, dry towel and let them rest again for 30 minutes.

Preheat an oven to 500° F. Take a couple of pitas at a time and place them directly on the oven rack. If you have a pizza stone, you can use that too. Bake for 2 minutes.

After 2 minutes, take a pair of tongs and flip the pitas over. Then bake for one more minute.

Repeat until all the pitas are baked. When you're done, you'll have a nice stack of fresh, soft pita bread!

You can prepare the chicken during one of the risings for the pita bread.

Mince two cloves of garlic. Add it to a bowl with the juice of one lemon, apple cider vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, Greek yogurt, dried parsley, salt, and pepper.

Remove any skin and bones from the chicken thighs, and then cut the meat into bite size pieces. Throw the chicken in with the marinade and refrigerate for about one hour.

The last part of this meal is the tzatziki sauce!

Use a vegetable peeler to peel the skin from a small cucumber. Then, slice it in half and use a spoon to scoop out the seeds.

Grate half of the cucumber with a cheese grater. Put the shavings on a paper towel to squeeze out most of the water.

Combine the grated cucumber in a bowl with the Greek yogurt, half a juiced lemon, extra virgin olive oil, garlic powder, salt, and pepper.

Cook the chicken either on the stovetop or in a 375° F oven for 20 minutes. Now it's time to bring the whole meal together. Spread some of the tzatziki sauce on a pita and top with the chicken.

Enjoy!

Printable: Chicken Gyros on Whole Wheat Pita

Recipe: Peach BBQ Sauce

It's official. I've caught the canning bug. I want to can anything I can get my hands on. Right now, peaches are in season, so I have no problem finding large quantities of them! Last week, I was able to get some organic peaches at the farmers' market for 10¢ a peach! I was already planning on making some Peach BBQ Sauce, so it's like it was meant to be.

Recipe is adapted from the Ball Canning and Recipes website.

Ingredients:
12 c. (about 6 lbs.) peaches
2 c. (2 large) red bell peppers
2 c. (2 large) onions
6 TBS. (about 9 large cloves) garlic
2 ½ c. honey
1 ½ c.  apple cider vinegar
2 TBS. Worcestershire
4 tsp. crushed red pepper
4 tsp. dry mustard
4 tsp. salt

First, remove the skins from the peaches. This can be done the same way as tomatoes. Place a few peaches at a time in a pot of boiling water for 30-45 seconds.

Remove the peaches to a tub of cold water.

Score the peach with a knife and the skin should peel right off. I find that this does not usually work with the smaller varieties of peaches. If you use the small ones, they can be peeled with a vegetable peeler or with a knife.

Cut the peaches in half, remove the pits, and chop into small pieces.

Chop the red bell peppers, onions, and garlic the same way.

Throw the peaches and vegetables a large pot with the honey, apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire, crushed red pepper, dry mustard, and salt.

Stir and bring to a boil. Once the mixture comes to a boil, the vegetables will be soft enough that they can be blended. Use an immersion blender to puree the whole thing. Then turn the stove down to a simmer. Make sure at this point that you're sterilizing your jars, lids, and rings.

After about 25 minutes of simmering, the sauce should be the consistency of a thin commercial barbeque sauce. You can simmer it even more to make it thicker, if you'd like. Ladle the sauce into the hot jars and get ready to can.

Process half-pint jars in a boiling water bath canner for 15 minutes.

When time is up, remove the jars from the canner and set on the counter undisturbed for 24 hours. Then, check the lids for a proper seal. Put any jars that don't seal into the fridge and use within 2 weeks. (I even put a couple jars in the freezer, and they came out fine!) Depending on how thick your sauce ended up being, you should get 12 to 16 half-pints. I got 13 half-pints.

This Peach BBQ Sauce is so good! It's definitely something different from tomato-based barbeque sauces. It's good on chicken, fish, and beef. We even put it on roasted red potatoes, and it really gave them flavor!

If you want more instructions on canning, check out my post for Homemade Tomato Sauce (and a Canning How-To!).

Printable: Peach BBQ Sauce

Woodstock Foods Giveaway! (ENDED)

It's grilling season! Whether it's at a picnic, barbeque, or family gathering, grilling brings out the best flavors in so many foods.

This giveaway is grilling themed! One winner will recieve:

The Gardener & the Grill: The Bounty of the Garden Meets the Sizzle of the Grill by Karen Adler and Judith Fertig. This book features 224 pages of grilling recipes. It's not just meats! They also feature sections on grilling fruits, vegetables, breads, and more.

Woodstock Foods condiments: sweet relish, saurkraut, kosher baby dill pickles, kosher planks dill pickles, tomato ketchup, yellow mustard, and dijon mustard. Woodstock Foods is certifed organic and a part of the Non-GMO Project.

The products in this giveaway are provided by An Organic Wife. Open to US only. Enter for your chance to win via the Rafflecopter below! Winner will be contacted by e-mail within 24 hours after the giveaway ends. If you do not respond within 3 days, I will choose another winner. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

How to Make Extracts

Making extracts is a do-it-yourself project that I've been itching to try. I finally did it, that way they'd age and be perfect in time for Christmas presents. I made vanilla extract and lavender extract. It was a fun project, and it was also very frugal even though I used organic flavors. Here's what you'll need so you can do it, too.

Vodka. I couldn't find organic vodka, but I think that's okay. You just need plain vodka, at least 80 proof/40% alcohol.

Flavors. I got organic vanilla beans and organic dried lavender buds. Be very careful of where you buy your ingredients. I get suspicious when I see 1/4 pound of organic vanilla beans on eBay for $6.99, when they cost minimum $30 everywhere else. I got mine from iHerb. I bought the dried lavender buds from an acquaintance who grows them herself.

Glass bottles or jars. You could even just use mason jars. You may know of my affection for glass in all shapes and sizes, so I bought something new from Specialty Bottle.

It's easy to make vanilla extract. Just slit the beans down the middle with a knife and put them in the bottle. If you've never used fresh vanilla beans, they really smell divine.

Put the beans in the bottle. I used 6 beans (0.8 ounces) per 17 ounce bottle. Fill the bottle with vodka.

To make lavender extract, just fill the bottles about 1/4 of the way with dried buds and then top off with the vodka.

Give all the jars a little shake, then store them in a dark cabinet. The vanilla extract will be ready to use in about 8 weeks, but will be even better if you let it sit longer. The lavender extract can be used in about 2 weeks, but once again, the longer it sits, the better it gets!

So how much did this project cost me? I did NOT factor in the cost of the bottles, because those are infinitely reusable.

Vanilla Extract:
   $6.16 in vanilla beans per bottle
+ $7.27 in vodka per bottle
   $13.43 per bottle or 79¢ per ounce.
At the store, the cheapest bottle of organic vanilla extract is $5.99 for 2 ounces, or $2.99 per ounce.
I saved $2.20 per ounce!

Lavender Extract:
   $0.33 in dried lavender buds per bottle
+ $3.42 in vodka per bottle
   $3.75 per bottle or 47¢ per ounce.
The cheapest I can find organic lavender extract online is $14.59 for 4 ounces, or $3.65 per ounce.
I saved $3.18 per ounce!

Recipe: Coconut Granola

I've been meaning to make homemade granola FOREVER and for some reason just never did. My friend Amy from GoOrganicBlog.com kept talking about how good it was, and when she posted a recipe for Cinnamon Honey Granola, I knew it was time to make my own. I used her recipe as a starting point for my Coconut Granola.

Ingredients:
3 c. oats
1 c. shredded coconut
1/2 c. golden flax seed
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/3 c. honey
1/3 c. coconut oil
1 tsp. vanilla

In a large bowl, mix the oats, shredded coconut, golden flax seed, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Grease a 9x13" glass baking dish. Dump the dry ingredients in and spread them out. Mix the honey, coconut oil, and vanilla in a small bowl. Pour it over the dry ingredients and mix it well so everything gets incorporated. Then, flatten it out again so the granola cooks evenly.

Bake the granola in a preheated 300° F oven for 40 minutes. Every 10 minutes, take the granola out and stir it so that it doesn't burn. When it is done, it will just start to turn golden, but will continue to brown a little after it's removed.

Let the granola cool completely, then break it up with a wooden spoon and store in lidded containers.

This was delicious served with raw milk in the morning!

I enjoyed having this for breakfast - it was a welcome change not to have to cook in the morning! It also makes a great snack.

Printable: Coconut Granola