Tomatillo Surplus, Salsa Success

This year's garden was kind of a bust.

The carrots didn't grow because, even though they were in a planter two feet off the ground, and inside a fenced yard, something ate their greens. So we got maybe ten carrots.

Something was up with the cukes: the first crop, started indoors, failed at the end of July. I replanted and got some nice plants with a ton of flowers, but everything died pretty quickly, leaving me with four misshaped cucumbers, and not all that tasty, either.

We got one teeny tiny pumpkin, but what can you expect, when you try to grow a pumpkin vine in a container.

All my strawberries were eaten by creepily aggressive chipmunks. And where are those chipmunks now? I'd rather not think about it, but if they're in my house, I will move out.

All my Roma tomatoes rotted on the vine. From the inside out. Not a nice surprise, I tell you, to cut into a shiny red tomato and find rot spilling out.

My beefsteak tomatoes were delicious, but only 5 grew to ripeness. Granted, they were each the size of a cantaloupe, but still.

My little Italian Ice grape tomatoes were tasty but yellow, not white, as advertised.

We got a ton of wax beans, but this year the kids decided that wax beans were no longer their favorite veggies, and in fact, they despise wax beans.

We had one green bean plant that gave us maybe twenty beans. One kid ate them all, refusing to share.

Our sugar snap peas were poor producers.

And what can you do with eggplant like this? (Each is approximately 1.5 inches in diameter.)

The lettuce was a success, so I have no complaints there.

The broccoli grew into plants resembling bonsai, and never even bolted.

The radishes were great, and plentiful in the spring, but a replanting failed. (Long, spindly roots?)

The chile peppers were good, but I only managed to grow four on two plants.

And finally the tomatillos: they were (are, because frost doesn't seem to be hitting them yet,) the takeover plant of the garden. We were supposed to have a frost this weekend so I picked around fifty tomatillos, leaving another fifty still growing, on my three plants. And now I have to figure out what to do with them! I'm afraid to can things, because of the whole risk of killing people if you aren't careful (and with my ability to be distracted, I'm likely to do just that)

so I have been making salsa.

I used a recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook:

Salsa

Prep: 30 min Chill: 2hrs to 2 days

Makes: about 2 cups salsa

4-6 tomatillos, husked, rinsed and finely chopped (about 1 Cup), or one 11-13oz can tomatillos, rinsed, drained and finely chopped

2 small tomatoes, seeded and finely chopped (3/4 C)

1/3 C finely chopped red onion (1 small)

2-4 fresh serrano, habanero, or jalapeno chile peppers, seeded and finely chopped

2 tbsp lime juice

2 tbsp snipped fresh cilantro

1/4 tsp salt

4 cloves garlic, minced ( I used 2, and it was plenty garlicky!)

Stir together tomatillos, tomatoes, onion, chile peppers, lime juice, cilantro, salt and garlic. Cover, chill for 2 hours or up to 2 days.

Unfortunately the salsa is NOT a good luck charm. The Sox still lost.