Salsa!

The food, not the dance.

Lots of garden-nummy tomatoes, but what to do with them? Salsa! I used seven or eight of my tomatoes, Grandma's hot peppers (3, no seeds) and Grandma's sweet orange peppers (2). Lots of chopped onions. Added a bit of sugar, salt, ground pepper, chili powder (wife's idea).

Everything but the tomatoes was cut up and sweated in a bit of olive oil. Tomatoes were skinned, cut up, and reduced. No cilantro on hand, unfortunately.

Thoughts for next time:

• Lightly sweating the non-tomato veg was good but they were added too soon. Next time, sweat them and add them at the last second! The flavors can marry in the jar.
• Cilantro.
• Don't add sugar if using the same peppers. Those orange ones are very sweet on their own.
• Include the seeds with the hot peppers! After cooking they lost all their punch.

Raspberry Martini

After much research and then tinkering, I've put together a raspberry martini recipe that my wife likes. I've done this some time ago but I need to keep this recipe safe somewhere so I'm posting it as a backup in case I lose my little notepad.

Raspberry Martini

• 1.75 oz Raspberry Infused Vodka (I use Stoli)
• .75 oz Chambord
• .75 oz lemon juice
• .75 oz simple syrup
• .75 oz cranberry juice (I've used raspberry flavored cranberry juice)

Shake, serve in martini glass. Rim glass with lemon and then garnish with lemon wedge on the rim of the glass.

My wife likes it when I put a bit more Chambord, but I find it makes it very, very "raspberry-y."

I also know the amounts are weird but that's just how it ended up.