HOT Salsas

Recently I visited my grandpa's farm garden and collected many, many hot peppers, pledging to do "something" with them. I had jalapeno, cayenne and habenero peppers along with lots of tomatoes, bell peppers, green beans, zucchini and cucumbers. I have some friends and family members who like super-hot foods, so I thought I might just try a recipe I came across for jalapeno salsa. I ended up making three batches of salsa:  one batch of jalapeno salsa, and then two more batches replacing some of the jalapenos with cayenne and habenero peppers.

I didn't want to spend the time taking out the seeds and veins of the peppers partially because they are so darned small and I had so many peppers, but also I didn't want that hot stuff touching my fingers! Most of my canning escapades happen during my daughter's nap time or after she goes to bed, so time is always of the essence. To save some time, I threw all of the cleaned and trimmed ingredients in the food processor to be chopped up for a slightly smoother textured salsa.  This moved things along a bit and didn't make too big of a mess.

I haven't tried any of the salsa yet. I'd like to say it's because the recipe said to let it mellow for 3-4 weeks, but really I think it is going to be SO hot! Even the jalapeno one, let alone the habenero. I canned some delicious peach salsa earlier this summer, and it was plenty warm with about 4 jalapenos in it. I didn't count all the peppers in these recent batches, but I know I had 11 habeneros plus some japalenos in one batch. This stuff is going to be HOT.  Hope everybody likes it!