Chips and Homemade Salsa

Do you ever have leftover cilantro that you don't know what to do with? I used to feel bad when some of the fresh cilantro that I had bought at the grocery store went to waste. But I just discovered the perfect solution. From now on I will use the cilantro to make homemade salsa.

I don't know why I had thought that making salsa was difficult. Perhaps it's because Michael and I have been searching for years to find a store-bought jar of salsa that we really liked. The difficulty, I'm realizing, is that we're rather picky when it comes to salsa. We don't like big chunks of tomato, we like lots of cilantro, and we don't want any distilled vinegar that could come from corn. Fortunately, I found this recipe for restaurant-style salsa. It was so easy, and we could make the salsa just the way we wanted it. You can follow the recipe exactly, or you can follow my modifications, which are based on what we had in the kitchen at the time.

Homemade Salsa

Ingredients:

• 1 28-ounce can of diced tomatoes. Try to find a can that has just tomatoes without any added citric acid or salt.
• 1 4.5-ounce can of chopped green chilies
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 1 clove of minced garlic
• 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
• 1/4 tsp. white sugar
• 1/4 tsp. sea salt
• 1/4 tsp. ground cumin
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups chopped cilantro
• 1 Tbsp. lime juice

Instructions:

Combine all of the ingredients in a food chopper, food processor, or blender, and pulse until the salsa is the consistency that you prefer. The salsa tastes best if you refrigerate it for a while before serving, but we couldn't resist eating some of it right away and it still tasted great. Serve with potato chips that do not contain any corn oil.