Finally today I was able to make the salsa I have been hoping to make this summer. I had wanted to make it fresh, with ingredients I grew myself. I almost succeeded. I tossed together your classic pico de gallo. This calls for just a few ingredients: tomatoes, garlic, onion, pepper/chiles, cilantro, salt and lime juice. I do not have an active salt mine here at the house, and limes just don’t grow well here in the northeast, so those were added, but all the other ingredients were my own.

And it was, I don’t mind saying, delicious. Of course, fresh salsa is pretty dang good food anyway, but this had the benefit of being near and dear and personal and all that business, so I thought it was particularly tasty. I brought it to a potluck party and it did all get consumed, so there must have been something more than my own eager ego at work. I will make it again if the cilantro pulls through. I picked pretty much all of it from one small plant. This plant had been munched to nubbins more than once by our friendly neighborhood Silvilagus, that cute little long-eared mammalian rascal. Several other cilantro plants are happily growing now, but they are small. I need time, I tell you. Last year we had lots of cilantro but no tomatoes. This year the opposite is the case. Timing is key and that isn’t happening in my garden.

I will make the stuff–pico de gallo–again. I may have to find some other cilantro, however, to make it happen in the near term. Did you know that pico de gallo means “rooster’s beak” in Spanish? What the hell is that all about?  Maybe I’ll just call it salsa.