Tomatillos: those green things
that look like green tomatoes that have that ominous papery shuck growing
around it that live in a pile in the grocery store but never land in my basket
or anyone elses evidently, because Ida Mama was given a boatload of them and
that boatload now resides on my dinning room floor. Let's sigh again.
What do you do with them? A
sane person might ask.
A sane person would buy about
10 or 12, shuck them, wash the sticky residue off them with soapy water, gouge
out the stem and drop them in a hot boiling Dutch-oven of water on the
stove.
Then she would dip them out into a sieve over the sink because it
is too dangerous to pour the cauldron with the little hot piles of floaters and
boiling water directly. This goes on until the sane person begins to
wonder what in the heck she was thinking and what had she gotten herself into?
Then as this person is dropping
them into the food processor while her hands are burning, she is grateful that
she only bought enough of these little green hand grenades to make one batch of
salsa verde. She also has been chopping peppers, garlic, three cups
(3!!!!!) of onions and juicing enough limes that she is starting to look at
them longingly in the hope that there will be enough left over to make a pitcher
of icy, cold margaritas. (After all, it is 102 outside and my air conditioner
is operated by gerbils.)
A sane person would pulse the food processor, pour up the
newly created salsa in a bowl, find a bag of chips, call in all the neighbors,
their relatives and any errant Jehovah's Witness who might be bicycling by to
sit and enjoy the fruits of her labors while shooting the non-existent breeze.
We, on the other hand, are
insane. Look it up. We (two old women should be holding a crate of
tomatillos) are under the entry for insane in the dictionary. We would
have looked better in the photograph, but the steam coming off the boiling hot
water made our hair frizz and our faces turn red and I am starting to get that
glassy-eyed look of the damned.
I realize that the average
person cares not for what happens to two nut-jobs who have lost the ability to
"just say no" to crates of produce, but in case you, like us, can't
stop yourself, let us all soldier on.
A sane person would be content
with feeding her neighbors the batch of green salsa and call it a day.
Not so the insane. With
the volume of tomatillos that are lying about awaiting their fate, the insane
are googling, "How to can tomatillos?" which is a misnomer
because cans are not involved. What's needed are boxes of jars, lids, and
something called a water bath that requires more heat, more boiling, and the
steam and stamina of a locomotive.
I am tired just writing about it. I'm off to make some
breakfast tacos and see if the salsa verde makes it all worthwhile.
Then it will be time to tackle the 50 ears of corn. Aw shucks.
Hugs,
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