Eggplant Salsa

If any of you ever thought I was a crazy woman, this will confirm it!

About a week ago, a reader left a comment about Eggplant Salsa for canning. Thank you, Susan! First, I’ve always known that eggplant and squash shouldn’t be water bath canned due to lack of acidity and pressure canning results in a jar of mush so I was a bit apprehensive about water bath canning this recipe, even though it has added vinegar but I did read in the post: “This recipe comes from the Canadian Living home canning book (2012) and has been lab-tested by them to meet Bernardin / USDA safety standards.” So, as Vince says “We’re old anyway so just do it!” 🙂

I made the recipe last week and it was delicious. We first ate it with just chips, as a salsa – loved it. Then I served it with brie and crackers and that was good too. The real “gotta have more” moment came when we grilled chicken breasts til they were almost done (just enough to get grill marks and a bit of a grilled flavor), topped them with this salsa, added fairly thick slices of mozzarella cheese, baked it for about 40 minutes. That was restaurant quality!

Yesterday I decided to pull the three eggplant plants out and move the horseradish to their spot in the garden. I pulled off all the eggplants . . large, small, medium. I had a sink full of eggplant and I decided to cut them all up and make a big batch of Eggplant Salsa. I should have done the math first!

The recipe calls for 500 grams of eggplant. I had 4,000 grams of eggplant . . prepped and ready to go. That’s 8 times the recipe. Hmmm . . that’s a bit more than I was thinking.

I didn’t have fresh tomatoes so I brought up about 10 cans of diced tomatoes, drained one can and weighed it. 10 ounces without the liquid. The recipe calls for 2.5 pounds of fresh tomatoes after seeds and skin are removed. 2.5 x 8 = 20 pounds. 10 oz. per can means I needed 32 cans of tomatoes. That meant several trips to the basement for more tomatoes.

This was not sounding like a great idea at this point but I had already started. My huge pot began to overflow so I had to get a second huge pot and divide it all up. What a mess. It’s too bad I had just cleaned my stove after breakfast because it’s a mess again and I was too tired after all this to clean it.

I ended up with 33 pints of eggplant salsa! That was a huge job. I can’t believe I didn’t just throw half those eggplants out or, better yet . . do the math before I started this project. Live and learn!

After I made this salsa the first time, I was thinking . . next year I’m planting four eggplants instead of three. After canning all day yesterday, I’m thinking I’ll plant two! 🙂