One of Our Favorite Things On Chips

My wife is from South Texas and is Hispanic.  I'm from South Louisiana.  We each brought different culinary favorites into the marriage.  She's introduced me to a number of delectable dishes from her culture, and I think she'd say the exact same thing about Cajun food that she had never eaten before.  She grew up on 'Tex-Mex' food, so there are some things from Mexico that she wasn't familiar with.

She learned to cook them, because she likes to try new things, and today, I'll show you something new for both of us that we really enjoy - Roasted Tomatillo Salsita.  Some also call it Salsa Verde.  Many times on Fridays we'll sit out on the patio and eat chips and salsa.  I'm ashamed to report that we will sometimes finish an entire bag of chips along with the salsa and that will be our supper.  It's so good!

 Tomatillos are also called Mexican husk tomatoes.  They are green and are surrounded by a papery husk.  I got some seeds and planted them and have had mixed results.  They grow and the plants get large and are covered with blooms, but we don't always get a crop.  I'm thinking that they might not be accustomed to our growing zone.  Fortunately, we harvested some and made Roasted Tomatillo Salsa with items fresh from the garden, except for the garlic.  Let's do this.

You'll need some onions.  This time we used Creole Red Onions.  Add some garlic cloves and peppers to your liking.  We used a nice Anaheim.  We took the husks off the tomatillos and put it all in a cast iron skillet.

We'll then roast the entire skillet in the oven until everything is a little charred.  During this process the kitchen smells amazing.

We simply put all the hot vegetables into a wide mouth mason jar, also adding a huge handful of fresh cilantro and a teaspoon kosher salt.  We like to do this right out of the oven.  This dish can be eaten hot or cold, but we enjoy it hot.

She uses a stick blender to blend (puree) everything together.

It doesn't take long at all until you've got a mouth-watering concoction that looks just like this.

We pour the entire thing into a pottery bowl and bring it and the bag of chips to the patio.

Here's a chip with fresh, hot, delicious roasted tomatillo salsita!

It is hard to imagine or explain how fast the bag of chips and bowl of salsita disappears!  It's become one of our favorite Friday afternoon snacks.  Note to self:  Grow more tomatillos.

Photos On An Afternoon Stroll

Afternoons are nice times for strolls.  Tricia and I have started a new habit of walking in the afternoon.  I'll talk more about it next week, perhaps.  There's always lots to look at.  Sometimes from a new perspective.  Afternoons are usually slow and less fast-paced than earlier in the day.  I walked through the garden and caught the sunset against the healthy sweet corn.  I expect the corn to begin tasseling in the next couple of weeks.

The green onions are all flowering now.  The honeybees are absolutely LOVING them.  They were flying all over the place.  Try to count how many are on the flowers.  They were buzzing loudly and flying this way and that.  We let them get after it.

Here is a close-up of two honeybees knee deep in onion flowers.  Onion flavored honey, anyone?

I have two stragglers that still need to be transplanted into the garden.  The first is a couple of sweet basil plants.  The next that will be transplanted is tomatillo plants.  My first plants died due to some issue with our grow lights.  I replanted them and about 5 plants are shown below.  It is our first attempt at growing them.  We want to grow our own to make homemade tomatillo salsa.  We had a post on it a couple of years ago.  You can read it here: Blog Post on Tomatillos  I can't say enough how delicious this is hot out of the oven!

Our final stop is on the back patio.  Tricia had an idea of splitting off some of our Louisiana Iris that grows in the ditch and planting some near the patio.  She did and they are very happy here.  It has been dry so the leaves are yellow, but the flowers are breathtaking.

Here is a zoom-in of the Louisiana Iris.  The colors are so brilliant, they make your eyes hurt!

I wish everyone a very good weekend.  Hug your mommas for Mother's Day!

Spring Garden in Late April (Part III)

Okay, I promise this is the last update on the garden in entirety.  I had forgotten to add a couple items.  First, let's look at some things I missed.  To the right, you'll see some birdhouse gourd vines that came up volunteer from last year's seeds.  Immediately to the left are a couple of butternut squash.  We LOVE to roast these bad boys and make a delicious soup.  So good!  To the far left (and all these vines mix together), are several spaghetti squash.  They'll vine all over the compost pile.  It will be a real hunt to find the ripened squash as those big leaves and vines will be all over the place.

I planted more melons at the north end of the potato patch.  Below, I have more butternut squash, some Hale's Best Cantaloupes, some Mini Cantaloupes, some Tahitian Melon Squash and Charleston Grey Watermelons.  These, if we're fortunate, will vine out into the yard.  (Less grass to mow.)

Here is the potato patch.  It is about 40 feet of Lasoda potatoes planted three across.  I planted about 8 pounds of potatoes.  They were looking beautiful a couple weeks ago, but they have an unhealthy yellowish color right now.  I'll get back to the potatoes in the minute.

Right in the middle of the potato patch, there is another (non-edible) crop that comes up year after year as they seed themselves.  I just let them grow.  They are zinnias.  They are multicolors.   Some pink:

Some orange, yellow and white.  I leave them growing as they add some beauty to the landscape of the garden.  You'll notice the potato patch is mulched deeply with oak leaves.  I'll turn these under to enrich the soil after the potato harvest.

Back to the potatoes.  This year I planted potatoes several weeks earlier than I normally do.  So I found the reason why the potato plants look like they are dying.  It is because the potatoes are almost ripe and the plants are about done!  I pulled back the mulch and exposed a mature red potato.  We'll be harvesting these in a couple of weeks.  Looking forward to it!

And one last thing.  I have one more late thing I'll be planting in the garden.  These are some tomatillos I planted very late.  It is my first time planting these so we'll see how it goes.  I like trying new things.  Some things we try we find we experience success.  Others, quite often, we fall on our face.  But that's okay.  We learn and we try again.

May your thumbs be green!