Tag Archives: gardening

Too many tomatoes?

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Craving a Flavorful Homemade Salsa? Try This Simple Pineapple and Bell Pepper Recipe

Too many tomatoes? Salsas are a great way to use them. No canning is required for this recipe. Plus, this sweet version will add fresh flavor to dishes any time of year. While many traditional salsa recipes call for onions and hot peppers, you can make a tasty salsa without them. The secret is using a combination of sweet and tart ingredients.

This easy pineapple and red bell pepper salsa comes together quickly with just a few ingredients. It highlights the natural sweetness of ripe tomatoes balanced by the tropical tang of pineapple and the brightness of red bell peppers. A bit of sugar and vinegar round out the flavors.

The end result is a chunky salsa with just the right mix of sweet, sour, and savory. Bright orange tomato pieces contrast with the red bell pepper and yellow pineapple tidbits. It looks as good as it tastes!

Best of all, this versatile salsa can be served with tacos, grilled fish or chicken, as a salad topper, quick dinner, or even as an appetizer with tortilla chips. The flavors complement anything from Tex-Mex dishes to Hawaiian cuisine.

Fresh Tomato Pineapple Salsa
Makes about 3 cups

Ingredients:

– 2 – 2 1/2 cups colorful tomatoes, cored and diced
– 1/2 cup fresh pineapple tidbits (from fresh or store-prepared pineapple spears)
– @1⁄4 red bell pepper, diced
– 3 tablespoon white sugar
– 3 tablespoons your favorite vinegar or mix of vinegars (I use ½ rice, ½ balsamic vinegars)
–
Instructions:

1. Mix sugar and vinegars in a glass container (I use four-cup Pyrex measuring cup) and microwave for ½ to 1 minute. This makes the sugar go into solution. Stir to combine.
2. Chop pineapple and bell pepper into ½ inch pieces. Add to vinegar/sugar mix.
3. I usually peel the tomatoes before chopping into ½ inch pieces.. This step is optional.
4. For best flavor, let the salsa rest for 30 minutes before serving to allow the flavors to meld.
5. Serve immediately or refrigerate until ready to use. The fresh salsa keeps several days chilled.

Tips for Serving Pineapple Tomato Salsa:
– I use different colored tomatoes.
– I prefer red bell peppers but you can use any color. Yellow and orange are sweet, too.
– Mix with cottage cheese for a quick snack or meal
– Pair it with grilled mahi mahi, chicken, or flank steak
– Spoon over tacos for a sweet contrast to savory fillings
– Brighten up a salad by topping it with a heaping spoonful
– Use as a burger topping in place of ketchup
– Dip tortilla chips or vegetables like jicama and cucumber
– Transform basic rice into something special by mixing in a few tablespoons
– Brush onto salmon or halibut before broiling for a flavorful glaze

This salsa really shines when made with juicy in-season tomatoes. Look for tomatoes that are fully ripe but still firm. The pineapple adds moisture, so drain any excess liquid from the tomatoes before dicing. When I get fresh pineapple from the store, pre-cut, I’ll freeze what we don’t eat. It’s easier to cut into tidbits when it’s partially frozen.

For best results, avoid using out-of-season hothouse tomatoes, which tend to be drier and less flavorful. Though if those are your only option, just boost the sugar slightly to compensate.

The possibilities are endless with this easy pineapple and bell pepper salsa. It’s sure to be a hit any time of year. The sweet and tangy flavors make it truly hard to resist!

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It’s Never Too Cold to Garden!

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What do you do when the planting urge strikes and it’s too cold to sow? I bundle up and start pruning and cleaning leaves and debris from my established beds and containers.

Any sunny day is the best time to do this, no matter how cold. First, you’re less likely to bother your plants when they are dormant. No broken green sprouts or branches if it’s still winter according to the plant’s bio-clock. Last week was an especially good time for us since we already had to make repairs. An overzealous county road worker with a brush hog pruned away part of my huge climbing rose hedge and damaged the fence when he overran his project. Grr!
Most of these roses were established when we bought the house. They formed a dense hedge that kept out road dust whether they were blooming or dormant.

Roses as they were, an idea of how tall with me as a reference, and how severely they were trimmed with a full-sized wheelbarrow for size comparison.

Ouch! Taking off so many branches looks harsh. These plants went from ten-foot-plus tall and wide blossom beauties to three-foot-tall sticks. They don’t look like much now but they’ll kick into gear in a month or two. I’ll share pictures when they’re in full bloom in June.

So that major project is nearly done (thanks, hubby) and now it’s time to figure out what annuals I want in my vegetable garden. I count backward from Memorial Day weekend (traditionally the start of the no-frost season in my area of North America) and figure out when to start which seeds inside in pots. I’ll put in onions first, then poblano peppers, maybe a few flowers, and around St. Patrick’s Day, seeds for way too many tomato varieties. Oh, and I still buy transplants from the nursery. Yup, I’m a plant aficionado.

Do you have a winter schedule for your yard and garden, too? Do you start from seed or buy transplants? And most intriguing to me, how many (or which) varieties of roses do you grow? Let me know in the comments below.

Take a break to read Tori’s story – or LISTEN to it when you ask Alexa to read it on your Echo device!

Check out the story of Tori, the plucky young woman who remembers everything: even her womb mates. Did her botanist parents goof when they didn’t tell her she was adopted? Check out HOW LOVE GROWS as a single or part of THE WHOLE SHE-BANG: Triplets Three Aren’t One Collection.

Growing Sprouts by @_NancyRadke

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Dear Gardener who can hardly wait for spring. Take this quiz:

  • What am I?
  • I am a fresh vegetable that needs no garden soil.
  • I can be eaten within four to seven days.
  • Minimal care is needed to grow me.
  • I must be grown in a closet or dark area.
  • My seeds keep for years.
  • I am not a mushroom.

If you guessed sprouts, give yourself an A. Growing spouts is fun and easy. I used to grow sprouts all the time, then stopped about eleven years ago. Hungry for them (especially mung bean sprouts in my egg omelets – Egg Foo Yung), I tried to buy some fresh sprouts at the grocery stores. No luck. Ditto at the smaller markets.

Opening my refrigerator, I found three different bags of seeds left over from my last sprouting years ago. I figured some seeds might still be viable, so I put about a tablespoon of each into separate glass jars, soaked them for six hours, then dumped off the water through a strainer, and put the jars into my cupboard. It was just that easy to start growing sprouts again.

Growing Sprouts

Here’s The Secret to Growing Sprouts

The trick is to keep the seeds from completely drying out but not sitting in water and rotting. Do this by rinsing them in cold water in the morning, at night, and two to three times a day and pouring off the water. Always return them to the cupboard and close the door. Sprouts like to grow in the dark. 

By day two little sprouts began to show, tiny ones on my alfalfa seeds and large ones on the mung beans. To prove the viability of seeds kept in closed bags in the refrigerator, I didn’t find any of them that didn’t sprout, even after all those years.

You can let them grow small leaves if you want to. I usually cap my jar and put it in the refrigerator to stop the sprouting process just as the leaves begin to develop. I had my first egg omelet with bean sprouts five days after starting to grow them. My salad mix of small seeds went into pocket bread. I mixed some of the alfalfa sprouts into my green salad.

Growing Sprouts

Growing sprouts really adds to your fresh food supply. All it takes is some seeds, a mesh strainer, and a glass jar. I use distilled water to avoid fluoride and the rest of the chemicals added to city water, so rinsed my sprouts in that.

WARNING: Only buy sprouting seeds that are meant for sprouting. You can get mung beans and alfalfa seeds at Amazon. Seed companies often treat garden planting seeds with a poison to prevent bugs from eating the seeds. So buy your seeds from a company that sells food-grade (safe) seeds for sprouting.

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Green Thumb Secrets by @JoanReeves #mgtab

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Photo of young woman walking along a garden pathI’ve given in to the call of spring and decided to share some green thumb secrets with you.

I tried to resist spring’s siren call, but I couldn’t ignore neither the fragrant jasmine outside my kitchen window nor the soft evening breeze that brought with it the smell of roses.

So I had a meeting with my houseplants first—hey, haven’t you heard you should talk to your plants?—and we all agreed it was time to repot some of them.

How To Make Houseplants Happy

(1) Before you stick a plant into a new clay pot—which is mostly what I use—take time to condition the pot first. Immerse the clean clay pot in a bucket of water and leave it until the bubbling stops. (If you lean close to the bucket, you can hear hissing. That’s all the minute particles of trapped air in the clay filling with water.) The conditioned pot will have absorbed moisture so it won’t “rob” water from the potting soil. This makes newly-potted plants less likely to wilt.

Park Bench and Large Potplant

My front patio with large pot plant

(2) If you plan to use a larger pot that has been used before, make sure you wash the pot thoroughly. Just because it holds soil doesn’t mean any old dirty pot will suffice. Bacteria, mold, and/or plant disease cells may exist in a dirty pot. Give the plant you’re repotting a fighting chance by putting it in a clean pot.

(3) Know how much to water a plant. Always use a plant saucer below the pot. Then water until water is running from the drain hole in the bottom of the pot. Stop. Empty the water from the saucer and replace.

(4) Every other month, if possible, immerse your pot plants in a tub of water so all the roots get wet. When the bubbling stops, remove the pot and set it in a place to drain. I’ve got some huge pots on both patios so I can’t do this with them so I try to take the time to let a trickle of water from a garden hose cover the entire top surface.

(5) If you don’t have a lot of time to tend houseplants and your plants are pront to drying up, set the pot plant inside a second larger pot. Line the space between the pots with sphagnum moss. Soak the moss once a week, and the moisutre will seep through the inner clay pot to evenly moisten the plant.

Romance and Gardening

I’ve never had a heroine or a hero who gardens, but in The Trouble With Love, Susannah’s mother is a gardener extraordinaire. The description I give of her mother’s landscaping was the way my yard looked when I wrote the book. After all, write what you know, and I know marigolds and other summer flowers and shrubs.

Cover art for The Trouble With LoveHang on to your Stetson as the fun and games begin in a sexy romantic comedy hotter than a bowl of Texas chili! By-the-book Deputy Susannah Quinn has all she can do to resist rule-breaking FBI Special Agent D. E. Hogan.

To catch a thief, Susannah and Hogan pose as husband and wife and go undercover. Unfortunately, Susannah and Hogan have already been undercover—in a Houston hotel where they first met.

For her part, Susannah wishes her lapse in judgment would take a flying leap and land on Jupiter. Hogan, on the other hand, wants to get the contrary deputy into his bed, but the complications caused by family—his and hers—pretty much guarantee that’s never going to happen.

Throw in an over-the-hill Romeo and his lady love, a middle-aged mom determined to have her own love affair, and the charm of a small Texas town, and you get a story with heart, soul, and passion—lots of passion.

Can Susannah and Hogan, two mismatched lovers doing everything in their power to avoid falling in love, catch a thief and recover stolen jewels? The clock is ticking. They have only seven days—and nights—to complete their assignment and resist the sweet siren call of desire.

The Trouble With Love is a Kindle Unlimited free read if you’re a subscriber, or only $3.99 if you want to buy and keep forever. It makes for great holiday reading fun.Social Media Icons

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Wishing you the Joy of Spring as well as the Joy of Reading!