Home Grown Produce

Oh wonderful, beautiful Saturday morning. I love the peace and quiet of my Saturday mornings. I find that my creative mind is in full gear on Saturday mornings when I am relaxed and unworried/unhurried. So, this particular morning I was strolling around the yard weeding around plants, checking for ripe vegetables, and checking progress on others. I harvested two large tomatoes, two cucumbers, some husky cherry tomatoes, and some basil. Nice day really for the home garden.

The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses. ~Hanna Rion

When doing the math online for how much money that just saved us I came up with about a little over a $5 savings. The basil can drastically differ in price depending on where you go. Tomatoes are about $.80 per pound for the organic, yellow variety that we grow. The cucumbers are on sale for $1 a piece right now. Our cucumbers are the pickle variety and a massive variety that is bigger than anything I've ever seen. It's probably 2-3 pounds on its own. My point in all of this is that it's pretty easy to grow your own food and save money without a lot of effort. It's great food too. Nothing tastes better than a home grown vegetable that you grew with your own hands.

So, with all that in mind I've been looking up some good pico de gallo recipes because nothing on earth is better than pico de gallo and salsa in my mind, and we have a ton of tomatoes that need to get used. We also have some jalepenos that will be ripe soon, as well as onions and cilantro (although the cilantro is fading fast as it flowered when we were away for the weekend). In the spirit of pico de gallo, here's a recipe that I found online that I plan to use:

Ingredients
* 6 medium Tomatoes diced
* 1 medium Onion diced
* 1/4 cup fresh Cilantro chopped.
* 2 to 4 Fresh serrano or jalapeño seeded and minced
* garlic powder just a pinch * Salt to taste

Put all ingredients in a bowl add 1/2 cup of cold water, mix well. Let set a few minutes. You will find a lot of recipes in this site, where we can use the pico de gallo for cooking and a garnish.

I got this recipe from: http://www.mex-recipes.com/pico-de-gallo-recipes.htm

The simplicity of pico de gallo and Mexican food in general is what makes me to drawn to the cooking. I love that you can use tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and peppers in so many different ways. You just add tortillas and meat and you have tacos, or many other Mexican dishes in different variations of the same ingredients.

I hope you all can enjoy a garden or at least some tomatoes this summer that someone grew with their own hands. Have a great Saturday!