the mellow tigger's musings

This salsa is herbal-spicy and very tasty. It is my own creation after a great many experiments. I use it more than any other recipe. How have I blogged for so many years without posting this recipe already?

I've eaten the whole batch myself as my meal-of-the-day with corn chips. It also works extremely well as a "relish" to add on top of hot dogs or brats instead of the usual condiments.

Salsa	Safety Rating: 5 Ingredients: 10 Dishes: 7
Wash the jalapeno, cilantro, and tomatoes to remove chemicals and dirt. Remove cilantro leaves from stem by cutting with knife or pulling with fingers. Discard stems. Cut tomatoes into eighths. You may discard the seeds if you find their taste unpleasant. This recipe is made in 3 simple steps: spices, tomatoes, and seasoning. The lime and salt are added away from the metal blades of the food processor, so they do not react with the blades to promote rusting. Add all ingredients (except tomato, lime, and salt) to food processor. Process medium (not fine), then pour mixture into mixing bowl. Add tomatoes to food processor. Process coarsely (not fine), then pour mixture into mixing bowl. Add lime juice (and pulp if available) and salt to mixing bowl. Mix everything well. Serve immediately or chill first. The salsa is very wet and juicy, so it is best to serve it in a bowl rather than on a plate. You may prepare salsa ahead of time then refrigerate for a day or two. Doing so will remove the "heat" from the jalapeno. You may need to compensate by adding an extra jalapeno during the initial creation.
Ingredients: red onion, 1/2 jalapeno, 2 garlic, 2 large cloves cilantro, 10 stems white pepper powder, 1/2 teaspoon (do not substitute black pepper) cumin powder, 1/2 teaspoon ginger powder, 1/4 teaspoon roma tomatoes, 6 small lime, 1 salt, 1/2 teaspoon	Dishes: food processor juicer knife cutting board large mixing bowl large spoon measuring spoon

I almost always use more spices than listed here. I don't measure the exact amounts, but the ratio is always white pepper > cumin > ginger. Also, I sometimes use 2 tomatillos and only 1/4 (instead of 1/2) of a red onion. Remove the dry husk from the tomatillos, then scrub them under hot water to remove the sticky residue. This recipe also works with habenero substituted for jalapeno, but I recommend letting the salsa rest in a refrigerator overnight after making it, so it loses some of its fiery heat.

Here are photos that I took today of steps 1, 2, 3, and final product. Click to embiggen.


I need to find a healthier way of eating salsa than using commercial corn chips. I've experimented over the years with taking plain corn tortillas and baking them in the oven. I get only "acceptable" results, nothing really good. Here are photos from before and after baking today.



I'm open to suggestions, both for baking corn chips and for an alternative that doesn't use chips at all.

Here's a curious question about (or for) omnivores: what won't they eat?

I have consumed meat from the usual variety of critters that Westerners eat (pig, cow, chicken, fish, shrimp) plus a few more (frog, rattlesnake, crawfish, and various bugs accidentally caught in my mouth while bicycling). I am planning to eventually convert to a primal diet that will require much more meat than my current diet. What creatures are not to be found on my menu?

There are some animals that I will not eat unless dire circumstance might present a reason, but why are they on my list at all? I've eaten rabbit before, so I'm not wired to avoid a kind of animal just because I've been emotionally attached to one of them before. I write my list with that trans-species bill of rights in mind, the one that doesn't exist but that I repeatedly reference anyway.

I avoid creatures that I consider sentient at some level. Sentience is a kind of meta-cognition, meaning that the creature can think about its own thinking.  I believe that some kinds of suffering require sentience to experience.  I think that all mature animals experience pain aversion.  More intelligent animals can experience dread of recurring pain.  A persistent history of dread may even offer a kind of despair. I think true despair, however, is limited to sentient creatures because it requires the ability to survey large landscapes of possibility and still find no course to alleviate suffering.  Despair requires mental exploration of options for relief, and the failure to locate any.

I will not eat creatures that might be capable of despairing that they will someday serve as my food.  I currently include these creatures in my prohibition:

• coleoid cephalopods (cuttlefish, octopus, squid)
• primates (human, ape, monkey)
• cetaceans (dolphin, porpoise, whale)
• various birds that don't seem easily grouped (european magpie, african grey parrot, crow, finch)

The only item from my do-not-eat list that appears in common restaurants is the squid. I've eaten calamari (squid) before, but I will not do so any longer.  I would be willing to eat even creatures on this list if they had already died of other causes (not intended as food), and I needed the nourishment.  I expect of myself that I would not kill them, however, if I needed nourishment and their living body was the only available source.

For the record, this list began with a single animal.  At Epcot Center in Disney World many years ago, I encountered a lone cuttlefish in a circular display aquarium.  It's bland coloration and catatonic body convinced me that it despaired of ever escaping its confinement.  I think it felt the despair of a pointless existence, or at least the alien equivalent of such emotion and realization. I have slowly added to my list as I learn of the advanced reasoning abilities of other animals.

I've marked the passage of a few "firsts" in my bicycle commuting adventure.  I don't know what to do when rain finally arrives.  Guess I'll find out on that day.

clipped:  I got clipped by a car on Friday coming home from work.  I had the eastbound right of way, but the oncoming westbound car decided to gun the engine and make a left turn to beat the other eastbound cars (not noticing me).  Luckily I pounded the pedals fast enough to escape any frame or rim damage.  My back wheel bounced and skidded a bit, then I rode on without any problems.

jock itch: I shower after getting to work, but air conditioning is regularly bad there.  Even when I drove to work in a truck, I ended up sweating in my cubicle from the heat.  So now with bicycle commuting, I don't actually dry out for 6 hours out of the day.  Not fun.

38C/100F: I rode home today in very hot weather.  Ugh.

adjustable handlebar: Wow, this change makes such a great difference on my wrists.  I should've put it on my bicycle when I first got it 12 years ago.  I swapped out my old handlebar stem with one that adjusts from horizontal (facing forward like the old one) to vertical (pushing the handlebar much closer to my torso).

appetite: The voracious appetite struck me on Friday evening.  I've made it thus far without any pizza, but I have succumbed to scarfing down vast quantities of corn chips.  I'll try this week to reduce my consumption.

I had intended to start a new paleolithic diet as well, but I've backed off of it somewhat.  Too many changes for me to accommodate at once.  Still, though, I've been trying out a few recipes.

parsnip: I made a buffalo and parsnip chile last week that would've been very good with some sharp cheddar cheese to balance out the sweetness.  I was expecting parsnips to be sort of like potatoes, but they aren't.  They're just albino carrots, very sweet.  Maybe next time I'll try rutabaga with the buffalo meat instead?

broccoli salad: I always enjoy eating that broccoli-bacon-mayonnaise salad, but I never made it until this weekend.  I ate some of it yesterday, and it's very yummy.  I need to figure out how to get more volume from the liquid stuff so everything coats better, but it was very easy to make and very tasty.