Strawberry Salsa

So It's strawberry season! YAY! :) There are few things more delicious, and summer, than a fresh warm strawberry. They're so red...and juicy...and...good. :) But the fact is, by the time strawberry season is saying it's final goodbye's, even the most ardent of strawberry lovers, can walk by a dish of fresh strawberries without a second look...or even a bite. It's sad. But true.

So this kinda tends to make you want to run, and scream. But not from the joy of having more strawberries than you need. It's more like a scream of frustration and terror. A run aimlessly directed...anywhere. So long as it gets you away from the strawberries. The molding strawberries. The squishy bruised strawberries. The slightly unripe strawberries. The giant strawberries that poured all of their energy into becoming the largest one of the pack, and seemingly none of their energy into becoming flavorful. Those strawberries are cruel and misled. So you're running away from that bowl of strawberries. Your screaming from the injustice of it all. You're deeply desiring to bury these strawberries. Well, at least that's how I get.

But anyway. Back to the subject.

So basically yesterday I spent most of the day with my mother in law and sister in law's making strawberry jam. I didn't make any. Because I was horrified at how much sugar it took. So I smugly watched from the sidelines and ran the timer for them. "Stop STIRRING! Your minute is up!" "Hey! You're supposed to stir the ENtire 3 minutes. Don't stop now, you have 17 seconds left." Yeah. So in the end I took home a large bowl full of strawberries to make my own, much less deadly jam. ;) Which, I made this morning. But I have to wait til tomorrow to see if it turned out. :) I only made one batch, no use helplessly flopping several batches of jam. Needless to say, I had quite a few strawberries left over.

So I made Strawberry Salsa.

I love fresh salsa. I love all things salsa. I can eat salsa by the spoonfuls. And if you have never had strawberry salsa, you are missing out. It's rather incredible. [on a side note, I've now written salsa so many times that I'm no longer sure if I'm spelling it correctly.]

It's sweet...and strawberry-y... and salsa-y. And awesome. GO TRY IT NOW!

Oh wait. You need the recipe. About that. Growing up my younger bro Veldon, was the one who made the strawberry salsa in the family. He made the best. [But that's probably because he was the only one that ever made it.] So I never recall seeing the recipe. So I sorta just felt it...ya know?

Recipe:
4-5 cups of finely chopped strawberries
1 chopped large green pepper
1 medium sized red onion finely chopped
1/2 of a large jalapeno (or however much you want) minced
1/4 cup of fresh cilantro, chopped
3 garlic cloves minced
1 small lime juiced
1 small lemon juiced
2 Tablespoons of olive oil
2-3Tablespoons of Honey (or to taste)
A little bit of Crushed red pepper
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine everything in a large bowl. Cover and refrigerate for 2 -4 hrs. (Or skip that part and just eat it all up right away.)
Serve with tortilla chips, or cooked chicken, or turkey, or pork...or...the options are as endless as they are delicious.

I put mine in jars to freeze. It made about 2 1/2 pints. Also! I found this really awesome place online where you can customize and print off your own labels! For free! You can choose from 5 different designs, and 3 different colors. So that's what I did. As you can see in the above picture. I just printed them on regular copy paper. Tediously cut them out. (the only drawback) Then, I "glued" them on with milk! It worked like a charm. :) I have yet to see if the label will stay on once I freeze it, but oh well. It looks cool right now. :) I'm letting them set out for awhile, so the flavors mix, before I freeze them. I like freezing stuff like salsa and jam's, better than canning them. Because they're fresher tasting when you go to eat them.  
Here is the link: Jam Labelizer

So yeah! There you go! Please try it. Really. It's one of my favorites. Let me know how it turns out and what you think of it!

If you want to know of another good way to use up excess strawberries, you could always make strawberry honey butter! Recipe here: Strawberry Honey Butter


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Pizza? Stromboli? A Cinnamon Roll? What???!

Hello, hello, hello, hello! Okay. I said hello enough times it was becoming annoying. But wow! Here I am again.

Who all out there has Saturday night for their designated pizza night? If you do, you're awesome. Almost as awesome as pizza.

I love pizza.

That being said, I like Stromboli just about as much. Just because it's a little easier to eat on the go. Maybe it's just me, but that's what I think.

But my problem is...Stromboli takes forEVER to bake. Seriously. I can't ever get it done totally. Yeah. That's my own personal battle that you don't need to know about. But now that you do...you may as well know that I didn't make that up. I just never can seem to get it done...without burning the bottom of it or something.

In my life, it's a little crazy. I often don't have a lot of time to prepare meals... So everything I make generally takes me 30 minutes or less.

Last night was no different. I was gone all day...and then all of the sudden my Marlin was gonna be home sooner than I thought and then we needed to be somewhere at 7:00. Do you ever have those moments where you look at your cupboards and frig full of ingredients and you have absolutely no idea how you're ever going to be able to figure out what to make? I do it all the time. Some days I'm sure I've run out of ideas and we'll slowly just starve. It's like writers block...but it's food block instead...and the stakes are higher.

So as I was staring at all the ingredients I had surrounding me, I started mentally going through the different things I could make. But seriously. Have you ever tried to figure out something to make, when you're hungry for something else? Yeah. I wanted pizza. I always want pizza. So that's nothing new. But I really wanted pizza. I threw the idea out because it'd be too messy for on the go. Next idea. Stromboli. No. Not a good idea. It's take forever to get done. But I for some reason started tossing together some pizza dough and next thing I new I had rolled it out and had things all set up to make Stromboli. But then I came to my sense. Duh, it's never worked before...now is not the time to try it again. There has to be food ready to go when he walks through that door.

Then it hit me.

This is what I came up with.

It was brilliant. It was genius. It was fast. It was easy...it was delicious.

So. Preheat the oven and mix together your favorite pizza dough recipe. I had instant yeast so I didn't even worry about letting it raise twice. After I mixed it up I let it sit while I gathered the stuff to put in it. Normal pizza stuff.
I think I had Turkey Pepperoni, Turkey Bacon, Hamburger, Mushrooms, Onions, Green Peppers and Beef sausage.
This is where it really helps to have things made up ahead of time and stuck in the freezer. All of my meat was already cooked and ready, and my cheese was already grated. So I just had to pull them out of the freezer and thaw them a little, and then cut my fresh veggies.
Then I lightly greased the area I'd be rolling the dough out and sprinkled it with cornmeal. Doing the same to the cookie sheet I baked them on.
I then rolled the dough out into a rectangle like you would if you were making cinnamon rolls. I was in a hurry so I didn't even bother making it perfect. I sprinkled more cornmeal on top of the dough before I spread the pizza sauce on..to keep it from soaking into the dough and get some of the moisture. Then I threw on all my toppings and rolled it up like a cinnamon roll. Cut it into even slices and placed them on the cookie sheet. From there I popped them right into the oven, without waiting for it to raise. Hey, I was in a hurry.

I baked them for 20-25 minutes, and a couple minutes before I pulled them out I put on the  "icing"...okay, before you gross out...I sprinkled some cheese over it. Let it melt...and then remove from the oven. Seriously. These can be eaten immediately and they don't fall apart. Also, they weren't in the least bit heavy and flat from not being allowed to raise. They turned out perfect. And start to finish It only took me 30 minutes. [granted, I can whip up pizza stuff really quickly.]

I'll share the pizza dough recipe I used for this.
Recipe

2 teaspoons of honey
1 3/4 cups of warm water
1 Tablespoon of Instant yeast
2 Tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon of salt
2 1/2 cups of whole wheat
1- 1 1/4 cups flour of your choice
(I have done it all whole wheat but I like mixing flours)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F

In a large mixing bowl add your yeast. Dissolve honey in your warm water. [this makes it easier to mix the honey in, as it kinda melts] Mix well with yeast. Allow yeast to bubble slightly. Add remaining ingredients. Mix well. Adding more flour if needed. Lightly grease the pan your going to be baking it on, and sprinkle with cornmeal, doing the same to the surface you'll be using to roll the dough out. Roll out dough into desired shape. Sprinkle lightly with cornmeal and spread with sauce. Add toppings. Roll up. Place on greased cookie sheet. Bake for 20-25 minutes.
[If you're going to be making pizza Sprinkle the dough with cornmeal and bake in oven for 7-8 minutes... allow to cool, Then add sauce and toppings. Bake for another 10-12 minutes until pizza is done]

[This recipe makes 2 thin crust pizza's. For the Cinnamon roll pizza I used all of the dough.]

There ya have it! These would also work well for appetizers...like if you made miniature ones. I think they'd be so cute! I'm totally going to do that next time. :)

Question: What is your favorite fast and easy meal to make?


I linked up with successful2gether

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