My First Encounter With A Jalepeno In My Kitchen

  

 

I have always been afraid of cooking with jalepenos (or any spicy pepper).  When they have come up in recipes I always omit them.  But the other day when I was grocery shopping I decided to go for it.  So I added a jalepeno, a lime, and an onion to my cart. 

In other Kit Kat Crafting crafting, please note I made this bowl in Ceramics in college!

However, I forgot the key ingredients of pico de gallo: TOMATOES and cilantro. 

I don't know what I was thinking.

So today I walked to the local market and bought roma tomatoes and cilantro.

 Results: Sadly I didn't like my homemade pico de gallo as much as I like Trader Joe's.  I think this is because I didn't chop my tomatoes small enough and my ingredients weren't very high quality.  But I am no longer afraid of working with spicy peppers (though I am still very nervous about taking my contacts out tonight.  I should invest in some latex gloves).  So, win.

I followed a recipe from The Pioneer Woman.  I scaled it down though and used:

1 jalepeno
1/4 of an onion
2.5 small roma tomatoes
half of a small bundle of cilantro
juice of 1/2 lime
a sprinkle of salt.

Here is what we ate it with:

The other half of the Mexican Vegetarian Casserole that I made a week and a half ago and froze!  It was very yummy, though even juicier than the unfrozen version so I had to let it cook even longer.  Next time I make it I'm definitely omitting the can of diced tomatoes!  It just makes it too juice and there are already tomatoes from the salsa.