Killer Salsa

Everybody has some kind of secret recipe. Most of my friends think my most infamous recipe is my fresh tomato salsa. I actually only take partial credit for the red and bloody hot stuff because a friend of mine in California burned many an esophagi to be my test dummy hour after hour.

Now honestly, like most recipes there really is no big secret. Cooking is all about balancing flavors that YOU like until whatever you are making tastes good TO YOU! Given that, I doubt you would be surprised to know that my secret salsa ingredients include chopped Habanero peppers, garlic, cilantro, onions, and tomatoes along with an unhealthy dose of salt.

Kind of like the theory of coffee, I make salsa EXTRA STRONG. The logic goes that you can always add ‘other’ stuff to bring the flavor down a notch if you need to, but it is very difficult to go the other direction. The problem is that once people try the salsa at full strength they like to keep it that way. Plus like all extremely spicy foods, once the burning starts, as long as you keep eating, you do not give your brain long enough to think about the pain.

The problem is that at some point you HAVE TO STOP and then you must pay both now and LATER. It is kind of the law of the salsa jungle. As an experiment, my father placed some salsa on plants that the deer kept molesting. The deer quit eating the leaves BUT because they were no longer green – the salsa actually made dark brown burn marks on the plant wherever it touched. So now when my friends want my secret recipe – I serve them up the world’s greatest weed killer . . . along with a bonus baggie full of tortilla chips!