Easy Fresh Salsa

When it comes to tomatoes "our cup runith over" of late. I love tomatoes as much as the next person, but we have been getting two baskets of tomatoes from our CSA for more weeks than I can remember now. These are great sauted with squash and some onion and served over pasta. I love them eaten fresh both in salad and on their own. However, there is a limit to everything. If I had more I would can them, but we never get enough at one time to fire up the canning pot. Then I saw the post on Food in Jars about making homemade salsa. We had a big bag of chips to go with our summer favorite of tomatillo salsa so this pico de gallo is perfect, or would be if I had all the ingredients. Since necessity is the mother of invention I fit the recipe to work with what I had on hand. Here's what worked for me:

I used:
1 pint of tomatoes (this is how our CSA tomatoes come, just visualize how many would fit in a pint basket)
1/2 a small onion
1 small handful of cilantro (in a real pinch fresh parsley could be used)
salt and pepper to taste
lemon juice
Chop up each ingredient and put it into a wide mouth quart jar. Once everything is in there put on the lid and shake it to mix everything together. Let it stand in the fridge for a few hours for the flavors to meld (or as long as you can stand if a few hours are out of the question). Enjoy!
A few notes. You may have noticed that I didn't add any sort of chilies. I like my pico de gallo to be really mild, if you don't you might want to finely chop a chili like a serrano or a jalapeno and add it depending on what you like. This is especially important if you use parsley either because that is what you have on hand or because you are one of the unfortunate souls for whom cilantro tastes like metalic soap. Also, I used lemon juice because that's what I had, if you have it lime juice would work better. Finally, I didn't add garlic because we'd just run out. If you have garlic you might want to add that too.

Try making this salsa, it is a quick, easy and tasty way to use up some off those overly abundant summer tomatoes. The best part is that as long as you don't go crazy with the chips it is pretty healthy too since it has no fat and is just fresh veggies. It is also cheap because it uses foods that are frequently in season at the same time and is a great alternative to store bought salsa.

This recipe is linked to Pennywise Platter at The Nourishing Gourmet. Head over there to check out other great recipes.