Homemade Salsa

HERE WE GO!

As promised, and a bit overdue, I'm sharing a recipe of salsa I made for the first time ever. I've never actually made salsa before - my adventures in preserving have mostly been in jams (posted here and here). But this year our garden provided us with an overabundance of tomatoes, so it was TIME to do something about it. After looking around the net for a few simple, but interesting recipe, I stopped at one that I felt would be a) easy to prep and b) easy to modify - I adopted (and tweaked) from the Stop Lookin Get Cookin blog.

And here it finally is!
(Note that I skipped the step of peeling the skins off tomatoes and I did NOT add sugar to the jars before pouring in the cooked salsa, in part because I just forgot, but also because there's enough sugar as it is.) 

Homemade Salsa

Quick update

My poor forgotten blog... well, not exactly forgotten, since I have been thinking of several things to share with you, but as usual, life got in the way!

(*** also, if you're wondering why the number of posts on my blog decreased, that's because I've decided to clean up a little and also to remove some photos of my little miss)

A few good "keeper" recipes ARE coming your way, I promise! But for now... Here are a few photos of this year's harvest :) We're definitely enjoying all of the yummy tomatoes; the biggest one we picked this year weighed in at an impressive 703 grams!

Postcard Collection

Hello friends,

Just a quick update to tell you that I started another blog where I'll be sharing my awesome growing postcard collection! I think it's time you see how one can learn a little bit about the world without leaving the house.

Stay tuned as I post the images for my 250+ cards :) and I'll try to keep you up-to-date with weeklies.

Here's the link: Postcrossing World

Russian Strawberry Compote

I remember when I was a young I used to LOVE when the first harvest of berries came around our dacha. My grandparents always had an abundance of strawberries growing in the yard. So usually, after we would feast ourselves on said berries, there were enough left over to prep and preserve them for the winter. There was LOTS of jam (and I'm making some this summer!), but there were also large 3L jars of berries compote.

This is my first time making this beverage (and if preserved properly, it keeps well into the winter months), so I decided to search for a recipe online. Of course, if you search for "strawberry compote", you will find a recipe for something that has a syrup-like consistency and is meant to be poared over pancakes, ice creams, etc. Though there is nothing wrong with that (yum!), it wasn't what I was looking for.

So instead, I ended up searching for "клубничный компот" and finding what I needed :)

(in Russian, of course). It looks and tastes more like a strawberry juice.

I hope you enjoy it as much I do!

Spring's in the air (and on our skin)

The sun is out more and more every day, and the spring has definitely (and finally!) arrived. This means that it’s that time of the year where we should look in busting out that sunscreen (at least for the pasty pale folks such as me)!

Most people have a bottle or two from last summer, hanging somewhere around the house. But before you slather yourself and your kiddies with that, there are few things that you should keep in mind: