Fresh Homemade Salsa

I love fresh salsa, especially during the summer. I like buy fresh salsa and some good corn chips and eat them as a snack or appetizer. They are great. And you can't go wrong with fresh. Every year, I can my own salsa, and I really enjoy making it... but I had never made fresh salsa before. I had been intending to try it out sometime, but I never really ended up doing it. Finally, I decided to do it.

This was the result!

This salsa was so easy to make, I will definitely be doing it again!

It's simple:

3 medium-sized tomatoes, cored and chopped

1/2 an onion, finely chopped

1-2 tbsp cilantro, minced

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

splash of lime juice

salt and pepper

2 jalapeno peppers, finely chopped

Now, its super easy, put the onion and garlic in a strainer and pour a couple cups of boiling water over them. Let them cool. I like to do this first, so they can cool while I prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Next, combine everything together! Feel free to add some additional spices, or take it to the next level and throw in some of your left over grilled corn! Now the best thing you can do, is leave it in the fridge for a few hours to let the flavours develop. 

N.B. When I made this recipe, I was out of jalapeno peppers, so I just threw in a little hot sauce. Also, I used wild garlic. 

Hope you enjoy! Try this recipe out! 

Until next time, Happy Munching!

5 Minute Bento

This morning, I was running a bit late, consequently, I had about 5 minutes to spare to make my bento (and I ate my breakfast at the same time! Talk about efficiency!). This resulted in a rather simple, but complete bento. My bento gear ended up being themed, but due to my hurry it was actually unintentional. The theme seems to be Studio Ghibli (it will become more obvious when you see the closed view and the bag).

In the bottom tier of the bento, I cut up one pita into decent sized pieces not only for storage but for dipping. They are to be partnered with the small pink container that actually contains a bottom layer of fresh salsa and topped with a thin layer of sour cream. The top tier contains not only a cute cat shaped pick but also an assortment of cheese (swiss, gruyere and cheddar), some dried mango, almonds, and some beef pepperoni sticks cut up into little pieces. These type of components are easy, delicious and quick and useful for fillers in your bento (which is why you may notice they repeat sometimes in my bento). You also may notice here I used a white divider that is shaped like an H. It actually came with the bento (along with a another simple straight divider and a special tray for small pieces of sushi or small onigiri). This divider was really useful for this sort of application because it easily, quickly and effectively divided the upper tier into four sections. Finding a box that has included dividers that are made to fit securely in that bento is a very good strategy. It will really help you fill your bento in a neat and tidy fashion. It will also contain food items a lot better than some of the flexible dividers that one can use such as the thin plastic grass dividers. I am really looking forward to this bento. I am sure it will be quite tasty, although it was simple and only took 5 minutes to make. This goes to show that even if you only have a few minutes, you can still make an interesting and yummy lunch, even if it is simple, and having a lunch with you is much better than trying to get through your day either without one, or having to spend money at the cafeteria or at fast food restaurants because you didn't have time to make a lunch. 

Here you can see the theme a bit. The main bento is Ponyo themed, and the small container is Kiki's Delivery themed (it is actually one of three similarly shaped containers that all fit inside one another!). 

And here is the bag. I apologize because it is not a very good picture and it doesn't show the bag very well, but at least you can get an idea of what the pattern on one side looks like. As you can see it is Totoro themed. The great thing about this bag is that it has quite a bit of room inside, it as a little mesh pocket inside, and it is thermal! So I also included an ice pack inside because I wanted to make sure the salsa, sour cream and cheese stayed cool. 

Well I hope you enjoyed today's entry.... Until next time, happy munching!