Andy's Idea Factory

Last week I shared last year's salsa recipe, but we're still getting tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and you can't just make salsa! Last year was our first year in the CSA, and every time we got a new bounty, I went online and searched recipes by ingredients. But we had extra single ingredients too... and made pickles out of the extra long italian cukes, parboiled and froze okra, green beans, and diced potatoes, and made pesto out of all that arugula. But next to salsa, our second favorite recipe that uses everything is the Gazpacho. It brings me back to summers in Chicago growing up. I can't take claim for the recipe (although as always, a little altered!), but the fresh CSA vegetables, uncooked and melded in flavor, speak for themselves! So much so that a local chef tasted our first batch with yellow tomatoes and said it was the best he'd ever had. Palisaide Colorado, Grown With Love, baby! Thanks Cameron Place! Joy of Cooking's Gazpacho with Colorado...

It's that time of year.... The CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) club we're in has peaked! Last week we brought home a truckload of tomatoes and peppers peppers peppers! and so it's SALSA time again! Last year was my first canning/jarring experience. It was grand. Despite learning a valuable lesson about shielding my eyes, nose, and nails from those spicy peppers, and burning myself once or twice on that steam from the boiling jars, I had a very successful yield of about twenty jars of salsa that became our family Christmas presents! I sampled several recipes in order to use all our vegetables, and chopped my heart out.... this is what we came up with: Chinacat Salsa ** 12 cups* cored, chopped tomatoes [ i use some yellow tomatoes to sweeten it up ] *(or about 14-15 medium toms) 2 12 ounce cans organic tomato paste 3 cups (or 4medium) chopped onions 2 cups lemon juice (or 8medium lemons squeezed) 8-10 jalepenos, seeded, finely chopped 4-6 long green or red chiles, see...

One thing I love about summer is the after-sun lotion we make ourselves. It's very refreshing, super easy to make, and it works like a charm. If I do burn (but since I've been using Avalon Organics sunblock I haven't) and I use our after-sun lotion, the redness is gone by midnight. The key ingredient is Lavender . So splurge. Buy a big bottle from a distributor if you can afford it, because you'll use most of the standard 5-8 ml bottle on this recipe alone, and it's so good for so many other things! But first and foremost Lavender is a proven cure-all for burns; 1st through 3rd degree burns improve and clear up within hours, cutting overall healing time in fractions. Second on importance is a clean base. I use Desert Organics Lavender lotion because it's free of parabens, sulfates, and other fragrances, but you can use a plain lotion too so long as it's clean and all-natural. Third, aloe. My father always used aloe when we were in Florida during my chil...