Cooking Fresh Food - breaking the jar/can/bottle habit...

[Sair]

Guess who paid $7 for 10 Fowlers 500ml jars with lids AND seals. I also got 4 other Fowlers jars with that and they have seals but no lids. Not sure if I need clips but with a bit of luck I can track them down anyway.

Now I just need ideas on what to preserve, I am more a veggies person then a fruit person. All I can think of is endless supplies of pasta sauce

I thought of another thing to add to the list of things to get a recipe for. We buy a lot of taco and burrito kits, I want to know how to make the taco seasoning for the meat. I tracked down a great salsa recipe but not sure what spices I need for the meat or can I use fresh ingredients?

[christy]

I did a mexican mince recipe earlier...? I think?

I use:
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika (sweet variety)
onion
cilantro or coriander (same thing....)
1 clove garlic minced
salt & pepper
1 cup beef stock
1/2 tin tomatoes or 2 tomatoes chopped

Brown the mince & add everything in. Cover & simmer for 20 minutes or so. I add beans or corn to the mince and jalapeno's.

[Sair]

Cool Christy, I am trying this tonight on nachos! Thanks so much!!

ETA I have bought another 25 jars with lids, seals and heaps of clips!!!! I just need to find a pressure canner now!!!

[Sair]

Operation nachos was a success!!! The mexican mince recipe from Christy was perfecto, pretty close to the El Paso taco kit flavour. I did add some cayenne for extra spiciness.

So I layered my nacho chips, the mince, the salsa and cheese and put in the oven at 160 or so until the cheese melted.

The fresh salsa recipe I tried was the following

2 spring onions, finely sliced
4 tomatoes (about 650g), seeds removed, finely diced
1 each of red, yellow and green capsicum, seeds removed, finely diced
4 tbs (1/3 cup) roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley, plus extra to sprinkle
1/4 cup (60ml) olive oil
Juice of 1 lime

I didn't have spring onion so used brown onion. I only had green pepper and I forgot the oil I added in jalepeno peppers for added spiciness.

Now that I have tried to break the bottle habit by making something from scratch I see that it is actually just as easy. Now if only it didn't make more of a mess I would be uber happy!!!

[christy]

WOOT Good job

My Salsa:

2-3 tomatoes
1 lime juiced or 2 tbsp lime juice
salt & pepper
1 red capsicum and 1 green capsicum
1/2 red onion
1 tbsp coriander
1 jalapeno
1 ancho chilli
1 clove garlic minced

I chop everything up, sometimes I take the seeds out of the chilli's if we are having friends over to play... ehem I mean eat. I chill it after stirring it all together and pop it in the fridge for 20 minutes or so. Sometimes I drain it after it has another stir & time to marinate all the flavours together. Sometimes I use the bar mixer to make it more smooth.... whatever I feel like at that moment.

[Olive]

janie it was i think $1.60!