Every year for at least the past 10 or more years we spend a day making salsa. We alway use fresh plum tomatos and produce. Since we moved to New Jersey we’ve been getting our tomatos from a farm on the way down to Princeton and have always noticed what appears to be a huge estate on the way there. This year we took a slightly different route to the farm which took us on a road around the perimiter of the estate. And since there were signs that seemed to indicate that part of it is open to the public, we stopped in. It turns out the place is called Duke Farms and it is the estate of a man named James Buchanan Duke whom Duke University is named after. It was left as a foundation by his daughter Doris and is only this year starting to be opened to the public. Appearently the property is 2700 acres and contains a 1 acre glassed in garden which is open from October to May. So I guess we will be going back in the the winter.
Anyway we got our tomatos and made 45 jars over the course of Saturday. Usually this is an all day event but this year we managed to get it finished quite early. This is probably because for the first time John and Alec helped out with some of the chopping. Our production was split half and half between our regular salsa and salsa alpha which is our own recipe that we’ve been perfecting over the last couple of years.