Recipe: Grilled Salsa

One of the aforementioned Camp America friends that I am still in touch with on Facebook shared this way of making salsa a whole year ago, and I only remembered I was going to copy it when she reshared it from her memories this week. I did it the same day. No time to waste on forgetting it again.

It's ridiculously easy. You select your vegetables. This is five tomatoes, two chillis, one yellow pepper, one red onion and four cloves of garlic. Cut up the toughies but leave the garlic in its skin.

Put them on a baking sheet, sprinkle with olive oil and I added salt here but I probably wouldn't bother next time. Put the whole lot under the grill for about 10 minutes. Turn the peppers and onions once. Don't bother with the tomatoes.

I was in such haste I almost forgot to take a picture of the grilled results.

Once everything is softened and grilled, slip the skins off the tomatoes and pop the garlic out of its skin. Bung the whole lot into a food processor with a big handful of chopped coriander (I used stalks as it was all we had).

Pulse briefly. I gave this five short pulses in my Kenwood and it was done. You'll know how chunky you like it, obvs. I did read one comment from someone who said they keep blending and eat it as a soup. I think that would work nicely.

I left the seeds in the chillis on this one and it has a nice kick to it, but not too strong. You can vary your veggies according to your taste. We made this to go with fajitas but then also ate it with lamb kebabs and in turkey wraps. So good. I recommend.

Throwback Thursday

Having the floor replaced has forced the Z household to do some significant clearing out of stuff. This is all very liberating. The poor charity shop won't know what's hit it, and today I have listed things on ebay for the first time in probably a decade. Excited to see that there are already eight bids on 15 items that have been gathering dust on my dressing table for years.

Anyway, with that spring-cleaning head on, I have photographed some things ahead of getting rid of them, so I will memorialise them in my blog, so they can live forever in memory.

Camp America was one of the best things I've done. I went to a Girl Scout camp, Camp Black Hawk, in Wisconsin for the summer of 1998. I learned a lot, particularly about how black attracts mosquitoes, how to dive a lake looking for a body (thankfully this was only ever a drill), how to use a campfire pie oven, how to make people feel happy and good, and how to hide a bottle of tequila and a pack of cigarettes just off-camp so that it wouldn't get wet or spoil. I swam with a giant turtle. I saw the Northern Lights. I learned all kinds of watercraft. I saw the Spice Girls in concert (Ginger had just left, devo'd). I went skinny dipping for the first time in my life (no kids on camp at the time, I hasten to add). I managed cut off from the world for two months, sleeping in a tent, with only actual paper letters and the very occasional email, when I could convince the senior to let me use the computer on site. I made friends for life. It was amazing.

When I signed up to Camp America and they sent me the welcome pack, this label was included. I didn't use it because it looked flimsy, but I have, nevertheless, kept it all this time. In fact, it might not have made it into the bin yet. How often can one thing so small bring back such a range of memories?

Yellow never was, and never will be, my colour.

Weekend WIP

I finished the first sleeve for this a couple of weeks ago, amid much lamenting and whinging and complaining, as is my wont. Nobody wants to be knitting angora in the biggest heatwave the country has seen since 1976. I promised myself a new linen cast on after the first sleeve was done.

Well, then we went and had the floor done in the living room, which accounts for roughly three quarters of the square footage of the ground floor of our house. The contents of said room are still stuffed into the spare room. Behind it is all my yarn. So, it was either cast on the second sleeve or not knit at all.

I put it off for two weeks, but the second sleeve is now on the go, as you see on the right of the picture. I wouldn't have time to finish a new linen for this summer anyway, although was I was wearing this yesterday and thinking how much I'd like another one.

Sunday selfie

When I started marking public exams and people told me I was crazy, I'd always shrug and say, 'Yeah, well...it's horrible for three weeks, but it's only three weeks, it's not part of the summer holidays and then you can spend the money.'

This week marks the start of the seventh week of this year's exam season. I have a post it note on my computer monitor that says, 'You wanted this job'. My resolve never to react to pressured situation by getting stressed has been tested to its absolute limit. Here was my reaction to a work friend sending pictures of him and our colleagues on a speed boat in Capri last week.