Jeepers creepers, now if that isn't annoying

Oh boy oh boy. I am in for a whole lotta work. Got my peaches last week, two (22 pound boxes). Peeled, depitted, cut up and done with that part. Put one of the pails into the fridge, did the work with the other pail and cooked and bottled the bunch.

Yep. That's what I did. All the cilantro, hot jalapeno peppers, hot red peppers, and onions and the other stuff added, looked beautiful. Garlic from the garden crushed.. Looked beautiful, oh did I mention that.

I needed a taster. These bottles all sitting on our kitchen table. Wanted to know the heat content. My Husband is the first guinea pig I see, smiling, and I know he will tell it like it is. Well????? Please dear Husband, how hot is it, do I need to lessen heat, add heat, tell me now. There is not heat. What? And it is too garlicy. What? You have to be kidding me. There is lots of heat and I did not put overly bunch of garlic. Please, what are you talking about?

Out comes a new spoon, in the event that the old spoon has too much heat on it for my taste buds. A teeny tiny lick of the salsa on the spoon. No heat. Hmmmm...bigger lick.....no heat, searched for some of the red and green chunks, which indicate the hot red and green (sweet bell are cut up small, the big pieces are to warn eaters that is the hot stuff). Licked off some of the big green and red chunks. Getting brave now. Not a smidgeon of heat. Ah come on. No heat? OK, so now a big spoonful of the mixture, getting braver. No heat. Not a smidgeon of heat. Oh did I mention that. And way too garlicy tasting. Sigh....now what....

I cannot believe this. This is 21 pints of salsa sitting on my table, and I am looking at them with disdain. (that is about 10 quarts, give or take). I am annoyed, and they can just sit there til the cows come home (geeze, seem to be using that expression a lot lately). This is crap to me. The garlic is overbearing and there is no neat. But it looks so beautiful, all these pretty jars that are holding crap!! Well, to some this might be a beautiful thing. But I am a very, very critical person when it comes to stuff I make for preservation for future. Crappy, beautiful, tasteless peach salsa. Yep. So my work is cut out for me again. In a way that I do not want to go.

Gick. I really have better things to do. This is jarred and preserved, so there is no hurry for my plans. I know what happened. I was at a place that was selling peppers, and the signs clearly were incorrect. I had purchased the green jalapeno, which were not that variety, clearly, I had purchased red long hot peppers, which were not long and hot red peppers, signs must have been wrong. I do have HOT, HOT, red peppers dehydrated, I just wll rehydrate them and use them. I know they are rock your socks hot....the green hot jalapeno....I will go to my garden, I have a bunch maturing now and I will pick those. I know I will have the hot peppers, just wanted them to be easy, like in not having to rehydrate or pick from my garden. My bad. I think this is called cumupence, my garden payback for not going to my garden first. Do gardens have spirits, thoughts? Do they have a soul? Maybe, oops, now that was a little weird.

Ya, so in my fridge I have the other box of cut up peaches, a little sugar syrup has helped to preserve them. That addition of sugar to fruit adds a longer life in the fridge. That box of cut up, stoned peaches will be cooked for a couple of minutes, along with the hot red and hot green peppers and then I will freeze in freezer bags. Waiting for that day when I can dump out all the horrid, non-hot, too garlicy (and trust me, I am garlic queen, so picture how much the taste of this must be of garlic....way, way too much, must be strong garlic this year, which is weird, same variety as ever...Fish Lake #3). Add that to the other box of peaches and hot peppers and recook for a couple of minutes. (will have to make 2 batches, my pot only holds about 10 quarts of product, boiling sugar and fruit has a tendency to get very high when it is at the full rolling boil stage). Re-bottle and then into the water bath for 10 minutes. Geeeze, really hoping for not an overcooked salsa. But it is what it is. I am annoyed, but life must march on. Gonna do all this on a rainy day, smiling. That is coming. Have a most wonderful day, CynthiaM.

Cynthia, I share your pain. This year I made sand jam. There is no wy to save it, so we just endure grit on our toast.

Uno I remember your grit jam, oops, I meant sand jam and meant to comment on your thread, just well, just didn't, got busy or something. When I get strawberries (and many of my washed vegetables) I don't even think about running them in a sieve under cold water or whatever. I do a float. Yep. I float all my vegetables and fruit if I choose to wash them. Which I rarely do, but sometimes, some food items need washing for sure. Couldn't imagine eating carrots from the garden unwashed, smiling. Yep, I have a nice container or two or three that live on my porch in the summer time. These could be a small rubbermaid, a bunch of 3 gallon buckets, a sink wash basin, you get the point. I use rain water for washing my washings. I have the luxury of two enormous rain barrels and I use the rain water. The water her is very alkaline and has lots of white stuff that stays on stuff when it dries, like white spots, don't like that. So when I run out of rain water, I do fill up the barrels with the well water, but much more prefer my rain barrel's water. It did run out this summer, too long without rain, but now they are all three full again, smiling. Lots of rain these past few days, glory be!! Ya. So I usually will have 3 things going on with water. The lot of whatever goes into the first container (depends on how much I am washing which apparatus I use), that is floated and washed around. Off into the second container for floating and washing and then, sometimes, if the third wash is necessary, then off to the third container. Then into a huge colander (that took me four times to get the spelling of colander right, thought it had two "ls", bother). Oh well, one "l" in colander, don't forget, smiling. Ya, so that drains, and then do whatever with it what I will. So, if you ever have sandy fruit, like strawberries, Uno, and anyone, don't just rinse in the tap under cold water. float your food and all that crap will float off and fall to the bottom of the washing container. That stuff is heavier than water and will sit on the bottom. yahoo for washing produce in floating water bath!! Have a beautiful day, CynthiaM.

How did the remake of your salsa turn out then Cynthia?
That sounds like if it works you will have LOTS of it (or even if it doesn't work  )
Very annoying for sure and sounds just like something I would do; I never can make a small batch of anything, even if Im trying a recipe and then as I try to fix a flop I end up with way too much of the still flop!
Thankfully have lots of critters that will eat my messes don't know about salsa though, even chickens might avoid it with all that garlic?

I did the same with tomato salsa earlier this summer. I made a big pot of tomatoes peppers etc and I slowly add the jalapenos during the cooking process as I don't like my salsa too spicy. I must have been chopping those things for hours, but no heat! Eventually I took a bite of a jalapeno and they had no heat. It was too early in the season for them. For whatever reason my jalapenos take a while to develop heat, but the chili's seem to have heat right away. I cut a few of them up and we were off to the races. I know my peppers were not mixed up, they just had no heat yet. I have a big pile of tomatoes ripening again so this weekend will be a salsa and sauce weekend. I hope your remake turned out well!

This is the first year we have grown our own peppers. Varieties were selected because they were known to have some heat. Unfortunately what we have picked so far are quite mild which is fine for 6 out of 7 eaters here. That 7th eaters really likes hot. Someone is off to the store to buy some imported heat.

Is everyone remembering to leave the seeds of the hot peppers in? I took the seeds out of my hot peppers...last year? And no heat at all. Was highly unimpressed until someone showed me the error of my ways. Cynthia, you can get  [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and sprinkle some into your dish of salsa, it will turn up the heat instantly!

Please remember, there are some of us out there that do not like hot....

So yesterday was salsa remaking day.  Cut up the approximately 20 pounds of peaches I had pitted and peeled before (waiting to make the second batch, sometime), added the HOT jalapeno peppers and began to rehydrate some habanero and red hot chile peppers.  Cooked the peaches and hot jalapeno peppers and then..this was the big part.  Too all those jars of horrid peach salsa I had bottled and poured them into this mixture, mixed it all up and basically rebottled the salsa after I had washed the jars.  What a ridiculous amount of extra work.  Oh well.  Done.  So, look at the above picture.  In the background you will see many bottles on the blue towel. Those are the ones that did not have the extra habanero and red chile, partially rehydrated peppers in them.  These dehydrated peppers came from my garden and I know they are rip your face off hot!!   the ones on the small towel (10 of them) are the bottles that I put the rehydrated hot peppers in.  Each one has a great habanero and two either red hot chile or green hot chile (green are the unripe red) and I tell ya, if that doesn't rip your face off and have a burning ring of fire, I don't know what will.  I can't WAIT for my Husband and my Sister, who love hot, hot hot, to try these hot jars.  Yes, come to think of it, I think that my next down Brother likes hot too.  So ya, next family get-together, out will come the hot, hot, hot and the not so hot, hot, hot, but still hot jars.  That would be on the coast, next trip down, whenever that will be.  Ya, so my newly bottled bunch of peach salsa.  Fit for the table of a king.  The other batch, wouldn't give to the very devil himself.  Lots of work, lots of anguish, over not tasting before bottling. These lessons we learn in life.  But these kind of lessons are not repeated.  Can't wait to see faces when they hit the habanero infused peach salsa, that evil side of me laughing my guts out.  Taste stuff before you bottle it, some words of wisdom to any that make preserved product.  Yahoo!!!  Have a most beautiful day, CynthiaM.

This is what a huge pot of peach salsa looks like.  That was the original pot.  The second batch, which was the good one, had to be divided in two, cause I added 20 more pounds of cut up peaches to the original mixture.  A whole lotta salsa goin’ on.

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Beauty.  All done, today will wash the bottles, remove the rings, as I don’t like to leave rings on, I think that there can be moisture beneath the rings and can cause the rings to rust.  Besides, just nice. Then label and store.  The hot product jars already have “hot 2013” written on the lids.  Had to do that, just in case someone (and we all know that usually the name of Husband is Someone) moves a jar, need to know, cause I don’t want my face ripped off when I eat some peach salsa, smiling.

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