Sunday Shopping

It's cooled off a little in the last couple of days, which makes us happy because this is the weekend we turn 10 lbs of tomatoes into salsa in our annual canning marathon.

Usually this is the hottest weekend of the year and we sweat from the heat as well as the steaming pots and chiles, but this year it's cooler and the salsa-making experience more pleasant. (I've written about our salsa-making in previous years - you can read that post here.)

The market was surprisingly full for a Labor Day weekend. We parked on Cahuenga and weaved our way among the clubbers waiting for their Ubers after a long Saturday night in Hollywood. Usually we carry all our produce to the car at once, but today we had to make two trips because we were so loaded down – a 12lb box of tomatoes will do that to you.

When we got home, a green pepper and an onion went in the pot with the black beans I'd left to soak while we went to the market. We'll be eating them tonight at our Labor Day weekend cookout. (I've written about these black beans – Larry's favorite – before. Find the recipe here.)

And after breakfast we started peeling the tomatoes and dicing peppers for the salsa. It's bubbling on the stove as I write this. Larry's gone to Trader Joe's for organic corn chips so we can sample the fruits of our labor this evening as we sit in the cool twilight on our patio and grill eggplant from our garden on the barbecue.

Here's a list of the organic produce we brought home with us today:
1 red onion, a bag of heirloom spinach, 2 green peppers, parsley, cilantro, red butter lettuce, red sails lettuce, romaine, assorted hot heirloom chilies, 2 cucumbers, 4 mountain-grown peaches, pistachios, 16 oranges, 1 avocado, 1 lb Guatemalan coffee, 4 tsugaru apples, 2 bulbs garlic, red potatoes, 6 ears organic corn, 3 onions, 2 poblanos, 12 lbs early girl tomatoes from Finley Farms, 6 red peppers, 1 yellow pepper, 1 orange pepper, scallions, green beans, asparagus, eggs, 1 cantaloupe.