farmer's market lunch. farmer's market salsa

I've been making my own salsa recently. I use it sometimes as salad dressing and sometimes when I make a couple corn tortilla chips for a midafternoon snack. I've used canned diced tomatoes because I had tons of them, but it's obviously great with higher quality tomatoes, especially those that are about to be a little too ripe to enjoy on your salad. 

The farmer's market today was crazy with peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and of course peaches. One stand was giving away cucumbers! Sliced salted cold cucumbers is one of my favorite summer snacks so I will certainly be enjoying that this week...

I had a little over a pound of tomatoes in my bag so they threw in a handful more to make it at least 2 pounds, though I'm sure it was more, and gave it to me for an even $2. I will be baking them in big slices, maybe attempting a summer tomato feta tart similar to this one, this one or this one, and of course eating them raw with salt and pepper and enjoying them in this salsa I just made. Yessss.

Salsa is flexible. Throw in whatever you have. I had onions and tomatillos already so I used:

the ripest tomato in the lot + one and a half tomatillos + a fourth of a large white onion. I also seeded and added half a jalepeno + a half a serrano pepper + fourth of a poblano pepper. Plus a dash of white vinegar + a dash of lime juice + a few generous sprinkles of salt. 

Process it all in a food processor. Eat.

It turned out pink! I really like the taste of tomatillos in salsa, Chuy's uses them. When I asked about cilantro, they said it's dried up in the heat, as had mine. So no cilantro in my salsa.

 

If you've never shopped a farmer's market, you're missing out! If nothing go for the experience. It's really fun to see and talk to the people who live and work around the food they produce. Oftentimes families are there selling their goods. You'll find great fresh juices and baked goods such great breads and baked goods handmade soaps, cheeses, herb mixes, candles. Samples of it all galore and of course great produce. I think a gentleman literally gave me the equivalent of a loaf of bread in all his variety of samples he was enthusiastically explaining and handing out. So fun. 

Some of it may be more expensive than the grocery store, cantelopes and watermelons were today, but a lot of it isn't and it's all much better and more fresh, my huge $2 bag of tomatoes, $5 bin of peaches and $2 bunch of kale for example. Plus it's fun to support the people who grow food locally and now that it's moved right down the street from me, I need to go more. I'm suuuuper excited about my farm fresh eggs! They were $5 a dozen, though, so part of me hopes I don't like them too much...