Christmas Every Week! / Chipotle Salsa

Between vacationing, housesitting, and absentmindedness, I have not been doing the CSA thing this summer.  But slack no longer!  Today Devon and I went to the Hollywood Farmers Market to pick up this amazing rectangular prism of a cornucopia.

kale

mustard greens

3 cucumbers

squash-o-rama: 1 yellow, 1 zucchini, 3 "Mexican"

4 large tomatoes

a gazillion cherry tomatoes

about 12 cherry peppers

1 bell pepper

2 small eggplants

1 ear sweet corn

1 large bunch purple basil

1 substantial watermelon

Oh, yes!  Now I have to tell you all the things we made out of it!  First off, the tomatoes were really really super--and I don't even like tomatoes that much.  But holy cow, it's like a completely different vegetable from what you get in the supermarket, even here in SoCal where many things from the supermarket--for example, avocadoes--taste absolutely amazing.

It was probably a waste of stupendous tomatoes to turn them into salsa.  Especially since we blended the salsa and it ended up looking like a pink smoothie.  Next time, we'll just dice. We also threw in some of these cherry peppers, which were way spicier than their cute little exteriors suggested.  Apparently the only thing to do with the remainder is to stuff them and deep fry them?

To be quite honest, the raw peppers actually made the salsa taste a little weird (we should have roasted them!).  It wasn't until we added some ground dried chipotle peppers as well that it really started tasting like salsa. We also threw in the corn from the lonely little ear in our box.

Fresh Chipotle Salsa

Ingredients

4 ripe tomatoes, diced

4 cherry peppers, minced

1-2 cloves garlic, minced

lime juice, to taste

salt, to taste

ground chipotle pepper, to taste

fresh corn * As for the eggplants, pepper, and mexisquashes, we broiled them just like this, with nothing but olive oil, salt, and garlic.  It's amazing how broiling and roasting just concentrate the inherent amazingness of good produce.

Broiled Veggies

All the component parts of this post were then combined with beans and fresh avocado into a slightly unusual, but tasty, burrito-type thing.  We also sauteed the kale and ate it on the side, but you all know what that looks like.  :)