What to do with frozen salsa sauce?

Yesterday we cleaned out the freezer. We scored some interesting finds. Bits and bobs of dried-out mystery meats. Rinds of old cheeses. Shriveled up zucchini in zip-loc sandwich bags. Was that from the banner garden year when there were 100 zucchinis every day?

“Hey, babe, what’s this?” George held up a quart jar of red something or other.

“Beats me. Put in the crate. We’ll defrost it and use it for lunch tomorrow.”

So for the next week we're playing ‘what was in the freezer?’ as a variation on leftovers. We’ll cook up anything that looks edible and not waste food.


Today the recipe I choose calls for a vegetable stew and a red sauce with eggs. I sauté onions and celery and carrots, then add the thawed red something we found in the quart jar.

“What ever you’re cooking smells amazing!” George lingered at my elbow.

“Shakshouka.”

“Whosatwhatsa?”

“Red stew with eggs. You’ll find out.”

When I poured in the mystery frozen red stuff, the smell let me know it was salsa. Ages old salsa. Salsa made by my friend Edith. She left me some a few years ago before she moved back to Mexico. Homemade. So I added some fresh tomatoes, that shriveled up zucchini, some of that cheese, and boiled this all for a time after I added some salt and garlic and other spices. When it looked pretty done, on went the eggs. They poached for a time.

George and I sit down for our first ‘what was in the freezer?’ meal for our dinner.

“I gotta tell you, Rosie, this amazing. Spicy and wonderful. Any more tortillas?”

I gave him a pile. “Glad you like my experiments. Edith would be proud of you, eating her spicy salsa.”

“What’s on the menu for tomorrow?”

“Perhaps we’ll do some baked chicken with salsa. I saved just a bit. We’ll have some rice. Maybe some beans.”

George didn’t answer. He was too busy eating.

But I did make a note to self, label all the food in the freezer. No more mystery frozen red stuff hiding at the bottom for a few years.

W/C 355