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...

Many weeks ago I posted a blog on Point-and-Shoot cameras describing some simple uses and settings that often go un -utilized. Today I'd like to take that a step further and show you some additional tips on focusing and depth-of-field. I've always been a fan of a blurred-out-background (or foreground) when shooting in macro, this setting is usually a flower symbol on your camera, but knowing how this actually happens within your camera will help you remember how to make it happen in the photo while using the camera's innate tools. A camera is like the pupil on your eye; to let in more light, it grows; to let in less light on a bright day, it shrinks. There are two tools on the camera that make this happen: the F-Stop and the Aperture. The F-stop is the hole size of that "pupil", or shutter opening, however it seems backwards: the larger the number, the smaller the hole... eg : f5.6 will let in a TON of light and raise your aperture (the time length of shutte...

Recently I've been putting my researching brain cells to work on studying the Gluten Free way of life. Since the age of 14 I have had psoriasis, and recently it's been showing signs of progression to psoriatic arthritis, a progression that occurs in about 20-40% of the cases (studies are still incomplete, although the reverse is 80% of PA patients have had psoriasis, so the two are definitely linked). I've been tested for allergies in the 1980s (none), and I'm a pretty natural consumer as well, so I don't use body products with harmful ingredients like parabens or sulfates. Herbal and homeopathic remedies and dead sea salts have all helped reduce my inflammations, but have never eliminated the disorder completely. I was vegetarian for 7 years in the 1990s, and that never cleared up my psoriasis either. Because of its progression I've started researching the diet and how it relates to the disorder, and stumbled upon several articles and studies that now link...

This summer we're trying that "as seen on TV" Topsy Turvy Tomato grower because our growing season is ridiculously short and we needed to be able to bring them back inside in September easily. Right now ours isn't very heavy, and we only put in 1/3 of the dirt to keep it light as well. We'll see how heavy it gets in late August! But it brought me to wonder, can't you build one of these on your own? It's essentially a plastic container with a hole. The topsy turvy is a round cylinder, hole at the bottom, wires at the top holding it up. It drains a lot of water so it needs to be over a towel or outside. In thinking of what plastic containers have holes and handles, you could easily build one of your own with a milk jug (best for its handle maybe), 2-liter bottle, or a wide cardboard tube lined with a garbage bag. The TT came with a styrofoam bumper for the hole so water and dirt wouldn't drain out- so cutting one of those is a good idea too, although...

Summer is always filled with outdoor fun, whether it be music festivals, chili cookoffs, Shakespeare in the park, or the kids' soccer tournament, if you're outside all day, you need to prepare. This month we'll be at the Mile High Music Fest, Red Rocks Amphitheater, and Saratoga Performing Arts Center in addition to some of our local outdoor fun. Here are some of our priorities for outdoor events. 1. Ice water . For events that allow you to bring in water, icing it down overnight in the freezer is key. It melts all day and provides a great cooling drink for a hot day outside. Most of you who live in the south do this anyway for yourself, but make sure to hop online and check the rules at your chosen festival, all of them are different. Most allow you to bring in unopened bottles, and you can insist they crack the seal to prove it if the labels are falling off from moisture. 2. Bug spray. I'm not a big fan of DEET. It's poisonous, in an aerosol can, and it smell...