Chips and Salsa for pennies!

I am huge into hitting the discount racks at the supermarket. The produce rack is my favorite!  Most of the time, the produce it totally unblemished and in perfect condition. I don't know what their criteria is for things like apples, but I would say I have only found about 5% of the apples having something like a dime sized bruise on them. Otherwise I am able to run away with pounds and pounds of honeycrisps, galas, a range of organics, grannys, etc. Most of these apples usually run for about $2.50/lb and I am getting them at 49 cents a pound!  

The other day I came away with 25 pounds of apples for $12.  Then a mixture of tomatoes, lemons,  and avocado's that would normally have been about $30 for just $6.50!

So.. today (my 12/12/12 birthday by the way) is produce processing day!  
Usually I come home and fill my dehydrator with apple slices and make apple sauce, but the tomatoes won't keep as long, so I needed to do something with the 7 pounds of tomatoes I had!  

I decided to throw a bunch into the dehydrator to make "sun dried" tomatoes. I sliced them about 1/4 inch and placed them on the trays, then sprinkled them with a bit of salt and some dried basil. 

I also have a bunch of jalapenos I had picked up last week. I am planning on making chipotle out of them, but need to make a smoker for that and have a full day available to tend them. So, I figured I would use up some of them. I found a recipe for jalapeno salsa.  Very easy!

I took 

• 6 jalapenos and just cut the stems off (I decided to leave the seeds in order to make a HOT salsa! If you want it more mild, remove the seeds)
• quartered 6 large tomatoes
• 4-5 cloves of garlic
• 1 small onion quartered
• salt
• sugar

I  rubbed the peppers and tomatoes with a little olive oil and put them into a couple large glass baking dishes at 400° for about a half hour. Then after they cooled a bit threw them into the food processor with the garlic, onion and about a tsp of salt. I tweaked it a bit with a smidge more salt and a little bit of sugar to cut the acid and Viola! Salsa!

Well.. now I needed something to have the salsa with.... and sooooooo I made corn chips! I couldn't believe how easy these were. 

• 1 cup of cornmeal
• 1 Tbsp oil
• 1/2 c boiling water
• salt to taste (about 1 tsp)

  I spread this out on a parchment lined cookie tray and placed another piece of parchment over it so I could smish it really thin.You may need to add more corn meal, or more water to get it to a spreadable consistency.  I scored it into corn chip shapes, then baked at 400° for about 10-15 min. I did one batch that wasn't quite thin enough and they didn't quite get crispy. 

Turned out to be pretty good if I do say so myself!  Salsa (like granola is something you can play with. You can make it chunkier, smoother, add green or red bell peppers, maybe red onion. I wish I had some chipotle to add to it! Have fun with it