Salsa and Freezer Corn

This week for Bountiful Baskets, they were offering a lot of good deals on produce for canning! We bought 25 pounds of tomatoes ($11.50), a 25 pound bag of green chiles ($12.50), 48 ears of corn ($10.50) and 7 dozen assorted flour and corn tortillas ($10).

Here's what the 13 inch flour tortillas look like:

Lauren's head looks like a pin next to the size of those huge tortillas! We got 3 packs of the 13 inch flour, 2 packs of 6 inch flour and 2 packs of 6 inch corn tortillas. They are par-cooked, so you just finish cooking them on the stove top, I guess.

We bought this 25 pound bag of green chiles, AKA Anaheim chiles or New Mexico chiles. It only cost us $12.50 for the whole bag, which the Jones's had to buy for us because we forgot to add it to our order. They're not spicy, they're actually kind of sweet. They have a lot of seeds in them, which make a big friggin' mess when you try to cut them up.

We made 24 pints of tomato/green chile salsa yesterday and plan to make another 24-36 pints later this week when our tomatoes ripen a little more. This salsa recipe is the best I've ever tried! We followed the recipe as written, but didn't seed the jalapenos in one batch to make it spicy, and then also added cilantro for flavor and tomato paste for color and more tomato flavor. Turned out AMAZING! There are just as many cups of tomatoes as there are cups of green chiles, so it really tastes unique. We pureed everything, so the texture is perfect for scooping it up with a chip. I'll send the recipe to anyone who wants it.

So today we had more than half the bag of chiles left. I set Landon up outside so the seeds wouldn't make such a mess in the kitchen, and he chopped all the rest of the chiles. The girls were in charge of removing all the seeds. As you can see, several neighborhood kids were fascinated by the whole process. It probably looked kind of funny to see the chile chopping process outside on a Sunday afternoon, but I also think that Landon is just a kid magnet. Earlier today, he rescued a little girl who had gotten the ties of her dress knotted on a Little Tykes car steering wheel. She was crying, "help!" and no one was helping her. Landon set her free and she stuck to him like glue after that.

We took the chopped chiles inside, pureed them, and put them in freezer bags for salsa later this week.

Today, we also made freezer corn. We cut the kernels off 50+ ears of corn, added butter, salt, pepper, and sugar, simmered it for about 8 minutes, cooled it, and divided it into 3 cup portions in freezer bags. We ended up with 11 bags of corn for the freezer. This was the first time I've ever tried it, and I'm excited to eat it in the coming months. It was really tasty after it had been seasoned and cooked.

I read online that it's a good idea to cut the kernels off the ears of corn using a bundt cake pan to hold the ear and catch the kernels as you cut. It seemed to work pretty well, but we still ended up with quite a mess on the counters and floor.

Generally we've had more success than failure, but last week we tried making pear marmalade and it didn't set up. I'm not sure what to do with it because it's chunky, too. I want to dump out the jars, puree the jam and try to process it again. Does anyone know if that's possible? Maybe it's just too late. I'm going to look online and see what happens.