Thanks everyone. I agree that Annie's Salsa is awesome. I usually add a squeeze of fresh lime and some more fresh cilantro AFTER I open a jar. I love the taste of limes.

Mary

Taking notes...thank you, ladies!

Mary, Since you like to add the fresh lime and cilantro after you open the jar, have you ever thought about making a batch with all lime juice instead of the blend of lemon, lime and vinegar? I think it might be worth trying. I agree about the cilantro. It seems less bitter if added after opening.

Dawn

Dawn, I have considered it. I may try to alter the proportions a little on one batch and see how it does. Like you said, the salsa is pretty darn awesome as is. I guess I don't eat a lot of canned salsa myself, but make it for my kids. They all love Annie's Salsa. As for me, I can always just add my lime and cilantro after opening.

I have small to medium size garden and this year I'm doing mostly tomatoes and peppers so that I can put up a lot of salsa and other tomato goodies. I also need to replenish my freezer!

On a garden note, this wind is something else! I lost one tomato plant so far, but the rest are doing pretty well. Hopefully, this wind will die down soon. I need to get the rest of the tomatoes in the ground. Hopefully today. As an experiment, I started squash and cucumbers under lights and they look ready to plant. I usually just seed those in the garden. I can't remember if they take to transplanting or not, but I'm giving it a whirl. I can always reseed.

Ya'll have such big gardens, but I try to stuff as much into my little garden as I can. lol

Mary

We don't care for it as written but love the idea of canning our own salsa so I make a few changes: Half and half vinegar and lime, leave out all of the sugar and replace all of the green pepper with peppers that have more flavor and heat. Add fresh lime and cilantro once open and possibly some more fresh peppers for texture.

I always use more hot peppers, but stay within Annie's 1 3/4 cup total guidelines. You mentioned leaving out the sugar. I think it was year before last, some of my tomatoes were "sweeter" than normal, which made those batches of salsa sweeter than I liked. So this year I will pay attention to the sugary taste as I go.

I leave out the sugar when I make batches for my son to take to work at his fire station. Those firefighters don't like their salsa sweet. They like it hot.

I always stay within the guidelines too, but will sub in some hotter peppers in order to make some batches that are hotter. You don't have to sub in very much habanero to get a substantially hotter salsa. I usually just substitute a few serranos for a like amount of the jalapenos.

You can transplant squash and cukes if you wish. It works best if they are well-hardened off, just like anything else raised indoors under lights, and if you use plantable pots of some type so that the roots are not disturbed during transplanting. One advantage of starting cukes indoors is that you can get the plants a bit larger before they have to deal with cucumber beetles.

I do have a large garden, but I still try to cram in about three times as many plants as it can realistically hold. I'm a jungle gardener.....I like the wild, overgrown, all packed in and jammed together look. Once all the plants have good size and are grown together in a big mass, they shade the ground beneath them and that helps keep the weeds down.

For those of us who don't can/preserve, is there a recipe for small batch Annie's for immediate use? I like using fresh limes in my salsa, too, but figure there must be a reason for using ReaLime and ReaLemon in the canned recipes. I love Cilantro in salsa...mmmmmmm. I don't grow enough tomatoes and peppers for canning but have always wanted to try Annie's.

Now that I have my Cuisinart (got cheap off Craig's List brand new), chopping is so much easier!

Thanks.

Susan