Cooking Floyd: Nectarine Salsa and Sweet Chili Glazed Salmon

The nectarines are amazingly good this year!  Sweet, silky, juice running down your chin good!  We've been greedily slurping them down one after another but I paused recently to note how tasty they would be as a salsa.  With salmon.  On a bed of greens.  Mmmmmm....

Spice Rack Challenge August: Cumin

Michael has had a distaste for Mexican and Southwestern food ever since he roomed for a few years with a blonde haired, blue eyed, Hispaniophile.  Dan was a great guy and pretty much the perfect room mate except for his love of all things south of the border touristy kitsch.  Dan's idea of great Mexican/southwestern cuisine was pretty much on a taco hell level and so every time it was his turn to cook that's what he imitated.  It's close to twenty years since Michael roomed with Dan and only in the past year or so that he's actually started to enjoy food with a southwestern flair.  I'm a lot okay with that because the boys and I used to have to wait for Michael to go away on business to indulge our cravings and since they've grown up and moved out I haven't had a reason to cook it.  Now I can!

This is the first year I've canned salsa since I met Michael.  We like it straight with chips, stirred into our guacamole, and I like it on eggs.  It was a happy coincidence that the tomato lime salsa I decided to put up contained cumin and I happened to be ready to can it at the same time as the challenge!