like a good neighbor...

The old Polish couple across the street are there!

Recently I had a terrible, no good, very bad day. It was absolutely awful. I was getting ready to go to the gym before work and somehow managed to lock myself out of both my house and my car without my cell phone. The worst part about this was that it happened at about 1 in the afternoon. No one was home. I knocked on the doors of my neighbors on both sides of my house and no one was there. Then I went one house more on either side with the same results. I was in a panic. My mom and sister (the only people with keys to the house) were about an hour away and Mike was at work too. Finally I realized that the couple who live across the street from my house are retired so they would probably be home. I got to their house and they let me in to use the phone and call Mike so he could come with the garage opener and let me in to the house and then break into the car for me to get the keys. It was awful and it took about 2 hours total, but I got to work exactly on time. Then when I got to work, I managed to leave my lights on and killed my battery. Of course I was parked between two cars so jumping it was a pain in the butt. It was completely terrible.

I was so grateful to my neighbors for letting me use their phone. The next day I baked a big plate of cookies and brought them over to show my gratitude. It just felt like the right thing to do. Sometimes you have to do the neighborly thing and lend a hand.

salsa

I don't want the entire month of September to be full of sad sappy posts, but I think it is bound to happen at least a little bit. My dad died 9/19/04 and with the 7 year anniversary creeping up on us I think he is on our minds even more so than every other day.
Over the summer of 2004 my parents started making really big strides to try to live a healthier lifestyle. They both joined the gym and my very picky eater of a father started to try to branch out a little bit with new foods. One of his loves was always salsa. One day he decided that rather than buying the premade kind, he would attempt to make his own. For most of the month of August salsa making overtook the weekends. We were working towards the perfect pico de gallo style salsa. We tried everything from different types of tomatoes, methods of peeling the tomatoes, how fine to chop the onion, how much lime vs salt to add and so on and so on! Eventually we got a recipe that we loved. Unfortunately it is done mostly by feel and taste, but I managed to jot down the basics to share with you today!
I suck a little and didn't take all the pictures I wanted to, but hey - I was working from memory!

Start with 6 gorgeous ripe tomatoes

Peel them. I found that scoring the bottoms and dipping them into boiling water for 30 seconds and quickly removing
them works best. The skin basically falls right off!

Ta-Dah! Mix all ingredients together for giant bowl of amazing deliciousness.

Proceed to eat 2/3 of salsa on tortilla chips. Then eat 1/2 of a bottle of papaya enzyme to help with the gas bubble
created by the salsa consumption.

Daddy's Salsa:

6 large tomatoes, peeled

2 red onions

2 whole jalepeno peppers

1 lime

1 bunch cilantro

1 teaspoon (ish) salt

Directions:

• Peel the tomatoes. It is easiest to peel ripe tomatoes by cutting a small x into the bottom of the tomato and submerging it into boiling water for 30 seconds. *I dipped them in and removed them with a slotted spoon and put them on my counter to let them cool before peeling.
• Dice the tomatoes. *I like them pretty darn small. Since you won't be cooking this salsa, it is best to chop them pretty tiny.
• Dice the red onion. This should be even smaller than the tomato. You don't want to bite into any big chunks of onion. Really the best method would be to use the fine dice option on a mandoline.
• Grate the whole jalepeno, seeds and all.
• Zest and juice the lime.
• Chop the cilantro super tiny.
• Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. Use a bowl that is one size bigger than what you think you'll need. Stirring the salsa is much easier with lots of extra room. Once you add the salt the salsa gets a bit soupy.
• Let it stand for as long as you can wait before eating it, I suggest at least 4 hours but really overnight is best.

I dug in immediately.

some like it hot

When we went to the salsa festival, the plan was for it to be just me and my mom. Saturday night my aunt called us and asked if they could meet us there, so we made it a family affair! I'm definitely a "more the merrier" kind of person so I was thrilled. The weather was calling for pretty severe thunderstorms in the afternoon so we met up at 11 to try to beat the thunder. We weren't successful at all! We ended up running through the orchard seeking shelter in pouring rain with very loud thunder. It was a quick moving storm though, so once it passed we headed back out into the fields to get the rest of our bounty. After the storm was over, the skies cleared right up and it was sunny and H-O-T, a perfect August day.

My gorgeous mother - she brings coffee with her everywhere she goes!

My family seeking the perfect spicy peppers to use to make hot pepper oil! Delicious!

My cousin, he's such a ham.

Rows and rows and rows of tomato vines. I love Marlboro's rolling hills. Gorgeous scenery there!

My mom scouring for the perfect tomatoes - we found LOTS of them.

I wished these were ripe, they were just so plump and perfect looking!

More tomatoes.

Standing in a row of peach trees. I look a bit damp here because it was post downpour. 

It was raining again, but as long as there was still coffee she was happy!

I went to pick this peach only to find this bug. I left the peach for him to have.

Our bounty of peaches and tomatoes. We also got cucumbers, zucchini, bell
peppers, hot peppers, banana peppers and an eggplant.

Even with the rain, it was a great outing to the town I grew up in. I have so many great memories of running around these orchards and driving the winding roads of that small town. I really love it there.

peach cobbler

My favorite grocery store had amazing peaches this week. They were sweet, juicy and soft. Really they were just amazing. I couldn't pass them up. Really, I went a bit crazy. I bought more than I could actually consume before they went bad. So I tried out a new recipe for some peach cobber.

It was really delicious. I loved the flavor. My only complaint was that because my peaches were so juicy and delicious there was way too much liquid in the cobbler. The next day it was like soup! I actually had to pour some out. I'm going to hold off on posting the recipe until I work on it a little bit more. Here's hoping that next week the peaches look just as good!

grilled pizza

One of my favorite times with Mike is our at home date nights. We make dinner together, spend some time hanging out just the two of us. For tonight's dinner choice we went with grilled pizzas. I grilled some red onion slices and some red bell pepper as the toppings while Mike ran to the local pizzeria to buy a pound of dough. I shredded some mozzarella cheese and got everything ready. By the time he got back the vegetables were ready and the grill was hot and set to go.

Pizzas on the grill

Love that freshly grated cheese

Nicely grilled (then chopped vegetables)

Nice grill marks, they were so incredibly delicious.

Plain pizza, and let me tell you, that dough was delicious!

Mike enjoying some of the pizza.

What could be better than pizza and beer?

Sheldon agrees! He wanted some too, but we weren't sharing...too delicious!

Happy date night!