Family Recipes

Do you remember sitting in your grandparent's dining room and eating fantastic food. Well those are the memories that I have with my grandparents. Every time that we visited them in San Antonio there was really good food, and funny house rules that were special to grandma and grandpa. Like you got a very small glass of orange juice for breakfast, you shared soda pop, ice was frozen in milk cartons, you could ride the skateboards to the fence line but not past, and my favorite was that you do not leave the door open because we do not air condition the outside.

Food was a great thing that we all shared when we visited. Like fried tacos, fried chicken, mush, relish and apple butter. Well when I was in college my grandmother mailed me some homemade relish and apple butter. Apparently she only sent it to me; I was honored and excited. You see homemade relish is made with green tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, vinegar, sugar and jalapenos. Every relish sold in the store is made with pickles. I do not like pickles. So I rationed my relish to last me most of college, which meant that I did not share with anyone or tell anyone what it was.

Now my grandparents are with the Lord and all we have is a recipe. My family loves relish and will do almost anything for it. Our aunt Janet made relish and we all got two huge jars, which has lasted almost 2 years. So my mother and I decided to make our own relish. We found tomatoes at Sprouts, and the produce guy helped us find the green tomatoes, which meant that he got a jar of relish. So after collecting all the ingredients we made our relish. Now the secret to perfect relish is to ring out the most moisture out of the ingredients as possible. I did not have any cheesecloth so we used a bed sheet. We put the mixture in the sheet and rung the sheet until the moisture was gone. After finishing the relish we called my brothers and sister to see what it worth to them. Everyone was excited and wanted their share. Now we plan on making relish on a normal basis so that we do not have to ration so much.

The product guy at Sprouts told me the other day that he has almost eaten all the relish and that he can never again eat normal relish again. It is great on hot dogs, hamburgers, and in potato salad.

Here is a picture. If you are at my house and we have hot dogs I might let you try the wonderful family recipe that will stay in our family. You can also ask the Conroy's because between the four of us we almost ate an entire jar.