Roasted Corn and Hatch Chile Salsa (Canning Recipe)

This tangy salsa combines seasonal vegetables--corn, tomatoes, and peppers--into a base perfect for blending to make your own twist. This recipe can be canned so you can easily whip up summer flavors any time of year. Try it mixed with black beans, or chunks of avocado, stirred into taco meat or layered on a taco salad.

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What my kitchen looked like when I made this recipe. I was also pickling banana peppers and canning pizza sauce.

Ok let's get a few things straight.  First, I work on this site about a year ahead. That means what I am posting now are recipes I made & photographed a year ago. I do this mainly because by the time I get the photos edited and I'm ready to publish a post . . . I've missed the season.

A top down view of my tall pasta pot that I use for smaller canning projects. This holds half pint and pint jars easily, but when canning quart size jars I'd rather use a full size canning pot. I inherited this pot from my mom.

I mean, I harvested my garlic scapes in June, stuck them in the fridge, and didn't make my annual batch of Garlic Scape & Pistachio Pesto until July. It makes no sense to me to offer ideas for what you could have done with your fresh produce from your Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share at a time when you no longer have that item to work with. So I opt to make, photograph, and sit on the recipes until I can post just in advance of when folks would be receiving their farm shares.

Second, as this month's recipes are showing, I made a lot of salsa last year. I'm so comfortable with salsa making that I'm teaching a salsa (how to can the tomato kind, not the dancing kind) class at my local community center next month. This year my cucumber vines are the darlings of the garden, so I am putting up several quarts of pickles each week. We'll do some taste testing over the winter and decide what's worthy of the website for next year.

The ingredients for roasted corn and Hatch chile salsa--I used a many colored bell peppers from the farm share.

Third, if nobody likes a recipe, it doesn't get up on the website.  This recipe narrowly made it here. I don't care for the salsa straight out of the jar. It's too limey for my tastes, though I understand that to boiling water bath process these low acid vegetables you've got to add additional acid so that they are safely preserved.  I know that taste is subjective, and maybe someone else likes that amount of tang.

Salsa Verde with Roasted Hatch Chiles (Canning recipe)

This tangy green salsa gets bright flavors from tomatillos and roasted Hatch chiles for a smooth dipping sauce that is also excellent in baked dishes. This canning recipe provides ample stores to enjoy the flavor year round.

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This salsa is one of the easiest canning projects I've done--very little chopping, doesn't matter if you've chopped uniformly or not, only a few ingredients to measure. The immersion blender (and the chile roaster at my local grocery store) do the bulk of the work. The hardest part for me last year was sourcing the tomatillos.

In previous years I'd get ample amounts of tomatillos in my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. In fact, that's how I started making salsa verde. My first time making salsa verde was NOT born from a desire to eat salsa verde, but from a lack of anything else to do with the tomatillos that were sitting on the counter!

After the initial batch, we got hooked on this tangy concoction. Last year I had difficulty sourcing enough local tomatillos to make a batch. I even spent 2 Saturdays hitting up various farmer's markets in order to get enough. This year I'm growing my own tomatillos. So far, so good. Wish me luck!

No Hatch chiles? No problem! Simply use the hot pepper that's available to you. It doesn't even matter if you roast it or not--the flavor will be different if using roasted peppers, but the recipe works either way. I can't give you any roasting tips because I buy my chiles already roasted. I picked up a container of roasted Hatch chiles once on a whim and I loved the flavor so much I come back year after year for more. Roasted chiles freeze well, so what doesn't get put up in salsas in the summertime gets used throughout the year. This year I'm going to try my hand at making chile rellenos with a quart, since we discovered that amazing concoction while Eating Locally on the Road last summer.


You could cool and eat this salsa right away, but I'm also giving canning instructions because this is my spouse's favorite salsa (mine is my Peach, Yellow Plum and Hatch Chile salsa recipe) and we eat salsa all year long. It's a terrific after school or pre-dinner snack, especially if you have family members who need to eat RIGHT NOW while you're standing in the kitchen finishing dinner preparations. Not that it's ever happened to me.

Grilled Korean-seasoned Chicken, Eggplant, and Pepper Rice Bowls

A summer dish made on the grill--Korean spiced chicken thighs grilled with farm share eggplant and peppers, topped with a fried egg and served in a rice bowl.

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I love an easy supper that can be--mostly--pulled off the grill and onto a bowl of rice. There's something very satisfying about eating from a bowl, and in the summer when it's hot it's rather nice to simply fire up the grill [and the rice cooker] and enjoy a complete meal.

When I came up with the idea for these bowls I already had chicken marinating in the fridge for my Korean-seasoned Grilled Chicken Thighs. I'd doubled the amount of chicken (on sale + on clearance) and skipped the marinated bag of veggies. But I had plenty of eggplant and bell peppers from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, so I wanted to use them in a way the family would enjoy.


I was thinking of Bi Bim Bap, the Korean dish cooked/served in hot stoneware bowls with seasoned meats and veggies and an egg to finish. I decided to make do with what we had, and to make it on the grill. I opened against digging out the stoneware bowl I'd gotten for my spouse. Someday I'll  do him up a proper dish worthy of the bowl. I also opted against picking up some kimchi or making some Spicy Asian-inspired Pickled Kohlrabi because . . . summer heat sapped my oomph.

Peach Salsa with Golden Plums and Roasted Hatch Chiles (Canning recipe)

This thick blush-colored salsa is sweetly fruity from the peaches and plums, with a nice level of heat from the roasted chiles. It clings to the chip so you get all of the flavor while dipping.

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Most Saturdays in summer, I walk a dog or three down to the farmer's market to by fresh produce. Like a Summer Tomato Sandwich, fresh ripe peaches in summer are one of those tastes you just need to enjoy while you can because you cannot replicate the flavor with out of season produce other times of the year. So we gorge ourselves with fresh fruit, and I keep buying more because I know I've got to get it while the getting is good.


Last summer my friend Jen posted a photo of her canning efforts on FB, saying that her son polished off an entire jar of peach salsa in one sitting. Intrigued, I asked her for the recipe. She told me it's straight outta Food In Jars (Amazon affiliate link), Marisa McClellan's eponymous (ooh!) first book from her terrific blog.

I knew from the start that I was going to change up the recipe because I've become smitten with the flavor of roasted Hatch chiles. Each August my local grocery store fires up a chile roaster in the parking lot (a round cage like contraption with a flame shooting into it) and I can walk a dog (or three) down to pick up a quart of freshly roasted chiles. [Like my local farmer's market, the grocery store provides water for dogs.] These roasted chiles freeze well, and I buy several quarts for a year's worth of roasted chile needs. If you don't have a local source of roasted Hatch chiles, roast the hot peppers you've got, or pick up a can of roasted green chiles at the grocery store in the Hispanic foods aisle.

I was thinking about the color of the finished jars when I chose the orange-purple peppers at my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share pick up. The final piece for this recipe came when my favorite fruit vendor had yellow plums at the farmer's market. The plums were so ripe they weren't exactly the best looking fruit, and we had a conversation about how good looking produce has no correlation with good tasting produce. With the combination of ripe local peaches, plums, and orange-purple peppers, as well as roasted Hatch chiles, I was set to get my salsa on.

Heirloom Tomato and Mascarpone Pizza

This grilled pizza is a gourmet version of the cheese and tomato classic.  Flavorful heirloom tomatoes on a mascarpone-spread crust topped with feta, fontina, and mozzarella cheeses. Simple is good when you start with fresh, amazing, local flavor.

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Sometimes it's good to keep things simple on a pizza. Just some cheese and tomatoes.  You could order in a plain cheese pizza or you could make it yourself, a variety of ways. You could pick up a box on the shelf of the grocery store, grab a fork, and have a simple cheese and tomato sauce pizza.
You could pick up a bag of dough, a jar of sauce, and a wedge of cheese and get busy. Or you could get an heirloom tomato in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share and decide to go gourmet, like I did.


One of the reasons I like to eat locally grown produce is because it tastes better than something trucked in from off. That flavor discrepancy is never more pronounced than in a tomato. There's something about a fresh tomato, picked at the height of it's ripeness, that cannot be matched by anything trucked into a grocery store.

When tomato season starts, I make it a point to enjoy a fresh tomato sandwich every week. That sounds easy, now, in the beginning of the season. Let me tell you--it can be a drag come September. But I do it anyway--changing it up with bacon, avocado, whatever looks good that day to me.



I also like to put fresh tomatoes on pizza. The trick to keep your pizza from getting soggy is to slice your tomatoes a good 30 minutes to an hour before you put them on a pizza, like I share in my Tomato Basil Pizza recipe. If I'm using my oven, I'll have my pizza dough sitting on the counter for a couple of hours before I plan to bake, just to get up to room temperature so I can work with it. I'll slice my tomatoes and leave them on a cutting board to drain, then turn on the oven to preheat my pizza stone for an hour. By the time the dough has relaxed and the stone has warmed up, the tomatoes have given up a fair amount of juice. I can tip that off the cutting board and I am good to go.

Peach Gooey Butter Cake

A delightful summertime dessert, this gooey butter cake is topped with fresh peaches. It starts with a boxed mix and is ready for the oven in no time!

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Half this year is over. I think it's time to set a few goals. One of my goals is to get better at actually using fresh fruits when they are ripe and abundant. Not to toot my own horn, but it is my blog and I do work to pay my hosting fees and all so . . . I'm pretty good at putting up fruit by freezing it.

shown here: peach jam, peach salsa, frozen peaches, shrimp gumbo, shrimp cocktail, shrimp salad . . .

I'm also pretty good at using that frozen fruit in a wide variety of ways. From Blueberry and Sweet Corn Waffles to Cheater Margarita Smoothies, I figure I've got a handle on the endless pints of blueberries I freeze each year.

What I lack in decent photos of the finished product, I make up in messy kitchen photos. My life!

For fresh fruits I make a variety of savory dishes. I've shared Black Raspberry Goat Cheese Crostini, Cherry Peach Salsa, Sweet and Spicy Chicken, Peach, and Chile BBQ Pizza, and Beet, Blueberry & Goat Cheese Appetizers on this website as a few examples.

No, what I need to work on is using fresh fruit, in season, as dessert. Last night I made (and ate,and didn't photograph) a peach and blueberry cobbler using the last of The Peach Truck peaches and some blueberries from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. [I got a fruit share this year. Score!] Tonight I'm going to make a patriotic Cherry Blueberry Cobbler to eat with the vanilla ice cream my son made this afternoon. I'll try and remember to take pictures so I can share it.

Today I want to share a tasty dessert that I have lousy photos of. See, along with using more fresh fruits while they are in season, I need to work on making more desserts for my family. Dessert seems to be something I make for other people, not for just us. After I get the entree and any sides going, I just don't have the energy to make a dessert. When I take a page from Alanna's playlist, and cook something every day, I have leftover sides a plenty and can take the time to make a dessert.

Hot and Spicy Zucchini Pickles

Use that zucchini or summer squash in a delicious new way. These spicy pickles are a terrific accompaniment to bratwurst, and bring a feeling of summer all year long.

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When I mention that I've been canning something, people respond 'oh, I'd like to learn how to can . . .'  like I say I'd like to learn how to weld. As if canning is something that requires schooling, apprenticeships, or anything more involved that just boiling water.

Really. The mystique needs to be swept away. I'll be teaching a salsa making class at my local community center in September (when all of those tomatoes and peppers are overflowing the markets) to do my part to dispel the illusions. I hope this recipe will help nudge you into canning if you're uncertain. It makes a small amount--just 2 pints--and that fits easily in a tall pasta pot if you've got one.

I decided to try this recipe because, as with all gardeners, hope springs eternal. Despite my previous squash pickle failure (which resulted in my Pickled Pork Sliders . . . salvaging a canning failure into a decent meal) I wanted to try again. Between my volunteer squash and those in my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share I was awash in squash.


I hit up my local library for cookbooks. Who says Summer Reading Programs need to be limited to novels? In the Better Homes and Gardens Can It! Cookbook  (Amazon affiliate link) I found the inspiring recipe. I modified it based on what I had on hand while keeping the key elements (acidity of final product and length of processing time) intact.

The recipe notes suggest eating these alongside bratwurst. While my cousin Jim would probably disagree (he thought mustard on my bun was heresy), I thought the spicy slices were a nice addition to a brat. I'm also glad to find a way to use the abundant garden volunteers that pop up throughout the yard.

For more recipes using zucchini, please see my Zucchini Recipes Collection. I've also got a Summer Squash Recipes Collection if you're waffling on what to call the squash in question (those bicolor ones can be tricky). These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.

Grilled Cherry Muffins #Muffin Monday

Grilled cherries and greek yogurt flavor this sweetly wholesome breakfast treat.

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The first bag of cherries to enter our house gets demolished in a matter of hours. My daughter and I  have had pit spitting contests, the kitchen trash becomes a spittoon, and my spouse always seems to step on the sole stem that ends up on the floor.

Our whole family enjoys fresh cherries, so when they go on sale at the local grocery store I buy them. And buy them, and buy them, and buy them. After a few bags, I'll looking for other ways to enjoy fresh cherries. I've chopped them up with peaches to make a fresh (i.e., not canned) Cherry Peach Salsa.  I've tossed them in smoothies. Most of the time, though, I pop them in my mouth, one after another.

Last summer, while having a blast with our new grill, I grilled cherries. Game changer! If you haven't grilled cherries, you should. They are totally tasty and exceptionally easy. Rinse whole cherries (stem and all), toss into a bowl, splash with a bit of cooking oil to coat . . . and they are ready to go on the grill. How easy is that? I used my grill basket, and had my gas grill preheated to medium heat. Stirring occasionally, my cherries were grilled in 8 to 10 minutes.

After you take the cherries off the grill, pick up the stem end and pop the (slightly cooled) cherry in your mouth. Yum! Spit out the pit (heck, you're probably outside already) and enjoy that buttery goodness a moment longer. It's not exactly like a bite of cherry pie filling, but it's on the spectrum.

CSA Farm Share Chopped Salad

This salad is filled with a variety of colors, flavors, and textures. A mixture of raw and cooked vegetables with grains, proteins, and herbs, this hearty vegetarian salad can be eaten as a main dish or used as a side salad.

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Today I want to talk about maximizing time.

Do you bring reading material, knitting, or your laptop with you when you know you'll be sitting and waiting somewhere? I do--either my Kindle at the doctor's office, or my knitting in the car, or my laptop while waiting for my daughter's sewing class. I like to be prepared when I know I'll be stuck somewhere for a while.


It's amazing how much focused effort I can accomplish toward a task when I am free of the distractions of laundry, the dogs wanting out (and in and out and in and out and in), or the lure of social media.


This recipe came about precisely because I was stuck without preplanned waiting materials. We'd dropped the car off for routine maintenance first thing in the morning and decided to swing by the dealership eight hours later, en route home from an errand.


The car wasn't ready.

Grill the farm share vegetables. It's what's for dinner.

Got a lot of vegetables in the crisper? Next farm share due soon? Throw the veggies on the grill.

If I'm unsure what to have for dinner, I'll start with what vegetables are on hand.  One of the lovely benefits of participating in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share is that we always have vegetables on hand.

In the Fall/winter, that means I gather vegetables from the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve in the basement, turn on the oven, then start peeling and chopping while I figure out what will go alongside a pan of roasted vegetables.  Examples of a Roasted Farm Share Dinner and Roasted Potatoes with Squash and Peppers are two recipes I've shared using this technique.


In the summer, I swap out roasting in the oven for throwing the farm share on the grill.  I use the same preparation as if I'm roasting, and the results are equally flavorful.  Examples of grilled vegetable recipes I've shared on the blog are Grilled Garlic Scape Pesto Smashed Potatoes, Grilled Green Beans, Grilled Mushrooms, and Grilled Butternut Squash and Peppers.

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There's no limit to what you can grill. In addition to the usual suspects above, I've grilled Bok Choy, Kohlrabi leaves, and Napa Cabbage. I've grilled naan bread for pizzas. I've grilled pineapple for pasta salad and next week I'll be sharing a recipe for Grilled Cherry Muffins.


Grilled vegetables can be used as is, or put up for later meals by freezing. I use grilled vegetables in salads, spaghetti sauce, lasagna, and on pizza. I'll toss them with pasta served in both warm and cold preparations. Having a pile of mixed grilled vegetables is an excellent building block in your What To Eat For Dinner arsenal.

I have no official recipe, just a technique.  I try and make the pieces as uniform in size as possible. I toss them with cooking oil (vegetable or olive) and sprinkle with salt and pepper. I've got a basket and a perforated pan for vegetables that are too small to lay across the grill grates.



Typically I've got the grill set at medium heat and covered during grilling.  After about 5 minutes I'll check on the vegetables and flip or stir them. Small items in a basket, like peppers and cubes of squash, will get multiple stirs. Larger pieces like eggplant and zucchini will only get turned once.

After the vegetables are tender, browned, and/or crisp I'll toss them with additional flavors. I really enjoy a dressing made from Garlic Scape Pesto thinned with olive oil. Depending on the eventual use of the vegetables, tossing the grilled vegetables with soy sauce or balsamic vinegar adds an additional layer of flavor over the salt and pepper.

If you've got a grill, try throwing the farm share on it this summer!

Grilled Eggplant & Chicken Parm Pizza

Take the classic flavor combination of eggplant parmigiana or chicken parmigiana and turn it into a pizza! This grilled pizza keeps the kitchen cool during the summer months.

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When I mention that eggplant is often one of the summer vegetables found in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share box, I hear 'oh I love eggplant parm'.  So do I. However, I hate to bake a hearty casserole in the summer when the eggplant is ripe. I've had success this past winter with using frozen (but already grilled) eggplant in baked dishes, but that's a recipe for another time.

How to Dehydrate Garlic in an Oven

Garlic is ripe all at once. Put up your crop by dehydrating in an oven, then use your minced garlic year round. This tutorial shows you how.

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I started this blog (and most of my posts are for) people like me who eat locally and seasonally from a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. Every once in a while, though, I've got posts for backyard gardeners. We're an intrepid bunch, looking to grow our favorites each year as well as try new things.


Many gardeners I've known start with tomatoes, because nothing beats a homegrown summer tomato. With tomatoes as the gateway vegetable I find that peas, peppers, squash and melons aren't far behind. Growing garlic is the next level up, and I've lost count how many folks I've encouraged to give it a whirl.

Where I've grown garlic--places that have some snowfall--I've found if tulip and daffodil bulbs will grow, so will garlic. [Never mind if your local varmints eat your tulip bulbs. In my experience the varmints don't have a taste for garlic.] You plant garlic in the Fall, and--this is why I'm posting now--harvest it all at once in early summer.

Quick Crispy Sugar Snap Peas

A fast and flavorful side, these sugar snap peas are quickly sautéed with spring onions for a crunchy accompaniment to any meal.

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I plant peas each Spring, hoping to get a jump start on the edible goodies coming out of my back yard. I never seem to remember succession planting, though, so I mostly get just a handful of peas harvested at a time. An amount that generally gets snacked on as I walk back into the house.

It's rare for me to get a working amount of sugar snap peas.  Peas are so yummy raw, or dunked in hummus or our favorite Spiced Cottage Cheese Chip Dip that I tend to just eat them that way. In an effort to broaden the family's culinary horizons I've also made a Cold and Creamy Pea, Avocado and Mint Soup--but it turns out that chilled soups are not something the other household residents embrace. All the more for me.

Simon's interest put all my other meh photos of peas and pea blossoms to shame this morning.

Waffled Carrot and Turnip Fritters

Shredded carrots and turnips, combined with a bit of spring onion, make an earthy and sweetly savory side dish or appetizer. Topped with some parmesan cheese and butter, it's a tasty way to enjoy the farm share. Use a waffle iron to make this fun snack.

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I find the start of each Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share season to be rife with promise. We'll have high expectations to eat ALL THE THINGS and then get bogged down in sheer volume of vegetables.


What helps me the most is to have a few 'go to' methods to deal with different types of produce. For example, when I'm overwhelmed with greens I know I can whip up a Fast Greens & Pasta dish to use up a large bunch in a way my family will enjoy.


I shared last week how I turn to my grill, in the summer, or to my roasting pan (in the Fall when I'm not worried about heating up my house too much) to turn root vegetables into building blocks for future meals.

Today I'd like to share another method--fritters.  I like to fritter away my time in the kitchen. It's much more productive than frittering away my time on Facebook, and the results are far tastier. I've shared several recipes for shredding vegetables to make vegetable pancakes or fritters. One summer standby (that you can make off season if you shred and freeze your summer squash) is my Zucchini Pancake recipe. I've shared a previous plain Turnip Fritter recipe here. I've even waffled up some St Patrick's Day leftovers in my Corned Beef Hash Brown Waffles.

Grilled Ciabatta Pizza with Chicken and Vegetables

Skip messing with raw dough and use ciabatta bread for this grilled pizza. Topped with grilled chicken, eggplant, peppers and zucchini, this flavorful pizza comes together quickly and keeps your kitchen cool.

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This pizza is an easy one to throw together during the summer. It uses previously grilled zucchini, peppers, eggplant, and chicken. These are combined with feta cheese and mozzarella, then used to top a grilled ciabatta loaf. I topped it with fresh basil for a real summer treat.

It's a common theme, for me, to use what I've got on hand for our meals. During the growing season I am using what I've got from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. During the colder months I'm using whatever I've put up--by freezing, dehydrating, or canning--combined with whatever looks good on sale at the grocery store.

Fresh Chive and Ricotta Muffins #MuffinMonday

Creamy ricotta cheese and fresh chives are the highlight of these savory muffins. Adding potato flakes to the batter, and using bacon grease takes the flavor of this quick bread over the top.

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Growing herbs is supposed to be easy. For the most part, herbs flourish when you harvest them frequently. For basil, it's pretty easy to make a massive batch of pesto and freeze what you don't use. Here's how I make my pesto. But chives have proven to be a problem for me. I take a few pieces at a time but don't use a whole bunch, so the clump tends to get scraggly from under-use.

Chive blossoms are another matter--I covet those and have even asked the neighbors for their blossoms so I can make Chive Blossom Vinegar, Chive Blossom Focaccia, and Chive Blossom Potato Salad with Egg. I'm on a mission to use more of my clump of chives this year, so I got the hankering to make some savory muffins.

Grilled Asparagus and Salmon with Dill Butter

Use the right tools for the job to grill a Father's day meal of Grilled Asparagus and Salmon with Dill Butter.

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Why do Father's Day foods have to be all red meat? Dads may enjoy a nice piece of fish for a change.  A healthier swap--especially with so much flavor--is a welcome addition to a summertime table. Plenty of vegetables never hurt anyone, so sharing the limelight with a fresh seasonal vegetable makes good sense and is good for you as well.