The first of the big garden cooking productions came last night with the weighing in of ripe tomatoes, green bell peppers, poblano peppers, and garlic, all from the garden, plus onions, cilantro, salt and apple cider vinegar from the store rounding out the mix for homemade canned salsa. "Zesty salsa" the recipe is called in the Ball Blue Book and it's many shares on the Interwebs.

It's a slow motion marathon, back and forth between the sink, counter, and stove, and I started out dicing peppers by hand but soon shifted to the food processor to speed the job. Peeling and coarse dice of all of those tomatoes much be done by hand (in my opinion - otherwise you're going to make tomato sauce in the processor). The only glitch in the operation was that I sat down at the table to read on the phone as I waited for the timer to signal 15 minutes of processing. Some time later I realized the timer not only hadn't gone off, it no longer retained the setting I had given it so I don't know if it needs new batteries or is on the fritz. I *think* the Rachel Maddow Show was just starting when I sat down and it was about 22 minutes in when I turned off the pot and removed the salsa. Processing an extra 5 minutes isn't a problem, I just don't want to under process it.

The kitchen sink was piled high with the large pots and bowls and food processor parts, so this morning my first job as tea brewed was to put all of that away. At least it goes pretty quickly - the pile looks huge but each item is large so putting just 3 or 4 away makes the sink look much better. Mind games to get through a job.

The house smells wonderful. I worked my way through most of the peppers I'd picked so far (I went out to pick a fresh bell pepper when I realized a couple of the ones I intended were getting a little wilted - always try to used the freshest best crops when canning). Those wilted ones will be diced and frozen later today, they won't go to waste. I have a large cardboard flat (Costco's 35 can sparkling water packaging) full of ripening tomatoes and the window sill is holding another dozen at least. I'm visiting the garden two or three times a day and picking any that have started a rosy color - they are officially vine ripe at that point and I hope to keep them from the sharp eyes of birds and squirrels.

The recipe offers diced measurements as well as approximate weight of ingredients (cups vs pounds), and this time I weighed everything. The recipe output says six pints, but having weighed all of the ingredients to be precise I got eight pints in the hot water bath and another pint and a half unprocessed in jars in the fridge.

After finishing cleaning the kitchen I did a victory lap around the kitchen. I need to head out to the garden to pick more tomatoes and my next decision - canning diced or sauce? And the next batch of peppers will go into jars with okra for Lady Bird Johnson's Pickled Okra recipe. You can look it up. Simple and delicious. I'm collecting a few okra a day, and soon it will be dozens a day since I recklessly put in six plants.