Fire-Roasted Tomato Salsa Recipe

It's tomato season and I bet many of you are searching for more ways to preserve the tomato harvest! Last year I had a bumper crop of roma tomatoes so I created this really easy fire-roasted tomato salsa recipe as a way to preserve the harvest. I had my freezer stocked full of salsa in various sized jars that we enjoyed through the winter months. I'm really happy to finally be sharing my recipe with you. It's a mix of roasted tomatoes and other raw ingredients, creating a nutrient-packed condiment!

Roasting tomatoes under the broiler brings out a stunning, sweet caramelized flavor, which adds depth and complexity to your salsa. It also releases some of the liquid in the tomatoes so your salsa does't end up too watery.

If you are looking for other ways to preserve your tomato harvest then you might want to try my Homemade Tomato Basil Marinara Sauce recipe, or simply freeze your tomatoes whole (stems removed). I like to take whole frozen roma tomatoes and soak them in hot water for a few minutes. This allows their skins to slip right off. Then I chop them up and add them to soups and stews in the wintertime.

Enjoy this flavorful salsa recipe with homemade gluten-free Brown Rice Flour Tortillas, cooked beans or meat, guacamole, and thinly sliced fresh greens.

Homemade Herbed Sea Salt Recipe (Herbamare)

If you have not already noticed, I absolutely love Herbamare! It is a fantastic replacement for salt or bouillon in savory recipes because it adds flavor without adding as much sodium. By replacing some of the salt with savory herbs and vegetables, you can naturally reduce the sodium while increasing the depth of flavors in your meals. Additionally, the kelp, herbs, and vegetables add important trace minerals, beneficial plant compounds, and pre-biotic fibers that feed the good bacteria in your gut.

Last year I began making my own homemade herbed sea salt recipe to mimic Herbamare. This helps save money and, if you have a garden, helps preserve some of your herb and vegetable harvest! It is so incredibly easy to make once you gather up all of the ingredients. You will just need a food processor or high-powered blender. And, if you don't have all of the ingredients don't worry! This recipe is very forgiving. Experiment with different dried herbs to get the flavor you like best. You can even make a spicy sea salt by including some dried chilies and black pepper!

This homemade herbed sea salt is one of the new recipes I added to the revised edition of my Nourishing Meals book. Use it in soups and stews, on top of scrambled eggs, sprinkled over mashed avocado on toast, use it to make roasted chicken taste amazing, and in any other savory recipe.

Homemade Sriracha Hot Sauce Recipe (sugar-free)

After a long blogging break, I'm back with an amazing hot sauce recipe for you to make and enjoy for many months. I grew a lot of hot peppers in my garden this year, in fact my garden has been extremely bountiful this year! Up until recently, I've sort of taken my garden for granted. I had no idea how healing gardening could be….until it was all I could do. You see, on June 2nd, just after returning from a functional medicine conference and after two years of non-stop work, I suffered an adrenal crash. Taking care of five young children, updating and publishing a book, developing an online program, co-authoring a new book, and being in charge of the development of a new website and book launch proved to be too much.

Two things that have helped tremendously with the healing process (other than totally slowing down, going to bed early, taking certain supplements, diet, and Epsom salt baths) are gardening and staying off the computer. Being in the fresh air, having the sun beat down on my skin, feeling my bare feet in the soil, and eating nutrient-dense raw vegetables and fruits everyday straight from the garden (your adrenals need a lot of vitamin C to function properly) has been extremely therapeutic for me. In fact, it would be wonderful therapy for anyone suffering from adrenal fatigue or adrenal burnout. The little bit of energy I put in, I got back tenfold in edible bounty. Gardening has helped to reset my cortisol rhythm and nourish me, whereas too much computer time (especially at night) along with too many stressors has led to a dysfunctional cortisol-melatonin cycle. To help heal and regain balance, I’ve also spent a lot of time with my children outside all summer …at the lake, river, ocean, and mountain. Nature is powerful medicine. I encourage those of you who are dealing with a chronic illness to get outside for a walk in the woods, spend time at a beach every week, and take some time to be in your garden everyday (you can start a garden this fall if you don’t have one already).

I just love going into my garden and harvesting the abundance of vegetables growing there, and then preserving them so we can enjoy their flavors, colors, and nutrients all winter long. If you have too many hot peppers, then consider making this hot sauce recipe. It's a perfect way to preserve them! If you don't grow your own hot peppers, then check out your local Farmer's Market; they are usually brimming with all kinds of peppers this time of year!

According to this resource, sriracha sauce is named after the coastal city, Si Racha, in eastern Thailand. Sriracha is used as a dipping sauce in Thai cuisine, and is also used frequently in Vietnamese cuisine as a condiment for pho, noodle dishes, and spring rolls. Of course, we use it on everything! Traditional sriracha sauce uses sugar in its ingredients. Instead, I use sweet red peppers to cut the spiciness of the hot peppers. The sweet peppers also add body and flavor to the sauce.

Cucumber Noodles with a Raw Pumpkin Seed Pesto Sauce (dairy-free, nut-free, grain-free)

If you are looking for more ways to use up the last of the lovely basil growing in your garden this season, then try making a pesto sauce! It can be frozen and then thawed in the wintertime for a taste of summer. We've been using this sauce tossed with raw cucumber noodles, cooked quinoa noodles, or to top baked wild salmon!

To make cucumber noodles, you will need a spiralizer. This handy kitchen tool makes noodles out of vegetables....zucchini, carrots, kohlrabi, sweet potatoes, beets, cucumbers! You can watch this short video I posted to Instagram a few weeks ago of me making noodles from yellow summer squash. You can order one here. If you don't have a spiralizer, then just enjoy this sauce tossed with cooked noodles, drizzled over baked chicken or cooked winter squash...or? Leave a comment below with more ways you are using it!

Simple Ways to Preserve Fruit

This time of year the fruit is falling off the trees and many people wonder how they can preserve it. A lot of fresh fruit ends up rotting. Maybe this is part of nature's grand design to add compost to the soil surrounding the roots? I don't know, but this time of year is very busy for most folks who have fruit trees and berry bushes. There are a few simple methods you can utilize to quickly preserve fruit.

We freeze much of our fruit in a extra freezer in our garage. Though this might not be the most energy efficient way, it is fairly easy and quick as long as you have an extra freezer. Dehydrating is probably the safest way because you don't need to worry about losing a whole freezer full of food if your power goes out for an extended period of time, plus it requires little energy. Canning is another method but much of the nutrients and enzymes are destroyed through the heating process. I wrote a whole chapter about preserving the harvest in our new cookbook, Nourishing Meals, if you want to learn more. Plus there are recipes in that chapter for vinegars, lacto-fermented vegetables, and sauces like Cayenne Hot Sauce!

How to Make Lacto-Fermented Vegetables without Whey (plus video)

Lacto-fermented vegetables are cultured vegetables. You've probably heard of sauerkraut, kim chi, and sour dill pickles, right? These are all forms of lacto-fermentation. Many people use whey as a starter but it is not necessary given you use enough salt. Making your own lacto-fermented veggies is so easy that once you start you'll be hooked!

Traditionally, lacto-fermentation was used to preserve the harvest and store vegetables for the winter. If you have a garden full of cabbage, cauliflower, beets, carrots, and green beans and don't know how to store them all, consider making a few batches of lacto-fermented vegetables. These veggies can be stored in your refrigerator for months....if they last that long!

Lacto-fermented vegetables provide a viable source of probiotics (at a cost well below most supplements) to heal and maintain a healthy gut. These beneficial microorganisms attach to receptors in our guts that send a signal to the immune system that says everything is okay, no need to overreact to foods and other things entering the gut, let's keep everything calm. If you are dealing with multiple allergies, chances are your gut is out of balance and is in need of a daily dose of beneficial microorganisms. These crispy, sour, salty vegetables are highly addicting and an easy, economical way to maintain a healthy gut. These vegetables are also important to include daily if you are following our Elimination Diet.

Tom graciously helped me make a video for you on how to make lacto-fermented vegetables! After many video takes (with Tom behind the camera recording me), my postpartum baby brain could not quite deliver the message as succinctly as I wanted, so he stepped in, and in one take we finished this video (even though he had never made lacto-fermented veggies before)!

Fresh Tomato Basil Marinara Sauce

This recipe in not the traditional way to make pasta sauce using fresh tomatoes. I take the easy and fast route. I just don't have time to remove the skins and seeds from 20 pounds of tomatoes each time I make sauce! Place fresh tomatoes in a blender and blend the seeds, skin, and all. Plus, this way we use the *whole food* -- the whole tomato. Once you begin to make your own you'll never want to go back to store-bought pasta sauce!

I have been buying cases of fresh, organic tomatoes from Smallwood Farms in Eastern Washington. If you grown your own tomatoes, this recipe is a great way to make use of them. The sauce can be canned in mason jars or stored in your freezer for later use. The other day I asked Facebook fans what everyone was doing with the tomato harvest this season. There are so many great comments. Be sure to head over there and check them out if you need more ideas!

How to Make Homemade Pumpkin Puree

Making your own pumpkin puree is really very simple. But there are a few important steps to ensure a thick puree. The water content of fresh pumpkin puree and canned puree can vary widely. Cooking pumpkin with water creates a thin puree, which will then cause your breads, muffins, cookies, and pies to be overly moist. Roasting pumpkin without any added water creates a thick puree that will most likely match the consistency of canned pumpkin. Plus, freshly made pumpkin puree tastes so much better than canned. It is sweeter, smoother, and just down-right delicious! Once you have made your own pumpkin puree, you can freeze it in containers for later use or store it in the fridge for up to a week.

How to Make Honey-Sweetened Jam

Homemade jam is usually so full of sugar, but it doesn't have to be! Using Pomona's Pectin, one can make a low-sugar, honey-sweetened, or fruit juice-sweetened homemade jam. This particular pectin comes from citrus peel. The jelling is activated by calcium water (mono calcium phosphate) which comes with the pectin. It is so easy to make jam from all of your freshly picked fruit of the season. Making and canning jam is one of the great ways to preserve the harvest!

Last year I experimented quite a bit with some of the hundreds of pounds of fruit we harvested. I made an awesome Vanilla-Plum Jam sweetened with coconut sugar, a Honey-Sweetened Blueberry Jam, Spiced Peach Jam made without pectin and with sugar, Blueberry-Lemon Jam made with a small amount of pureed unripe, immature apples as the pectin source (unripe apples are high in pectin), a tart Italian Plum-Agave Jam, and Cherry-Peach Jam sweetened with grape juice concentrate. Let me tell you, homemade jam makes for many wonderful Christmas gifts!