Market goers dip into salsa contest

The Washington Farmers Market held its annual salsa contest Thursday night. Hungry guests enjoyed more than two dozen salsas of various textures and spices. Participants voted on their two favorite salsas, although the chef responsible for each salsa was kept a secret until after the voting. The results will be released at an upcoming farmers market.

Jennie Reschly, of Ainsworth, made two salsas for the contest. She had a lot of trouble, and then a lot of fun, thinking of names for them. She asked marketmaster Bob Shepherd if she could just call them ?Jennie?s salsa? but he encouraged her to come up with a unique name.

?I Facebooked and e-mailed people and, 27 responses later, I narrowed it down to two names,? she said.

The two names Reschly came up with were ?Salsa for Sissies,? for her mild salsa, and ?Better Than a Tame Tango? for her medium salsa.

Reschly has made salsa for 20 years. She gets all of her ingredients from her garden. She keeps the full recipe close to her vest, but she is willing to disclose the main ingredients, which are Roma tomatoes, sweet yellow onions, green peppers and jalapeños.

Reschly?s friends couldn?t believe that her garden has done so well. They ask her why the rabbits haven?t nibbled at her greens, and she tells them that she sprinkles  cayenne pepper on them. She heard that if you sprinkle it on hostas, deer won?t eat them. She tried it with the rest of her plants and it seems to have worked.

The people in line to taste all the salsas included Babe Hilfman and Duayne Seberg. Hilfman said she enjoyed the salsas and that her husband, Leon, is particularly fond of hot salsas. Seberg said his favorite kind of salsa is chi-chi and that he likes it with black beans and sweet corn. He prefers medium salsas but he can handle a little jalapeño in his dish, too.

Kara Batt, the new aquatics director at the Washington Community Y, said she really enjoyed the cherry salsa.

?We made a mango salsa the first time we made salsa,? she said.

Paul Batt, Kara?s husband, said he is a ?wimp? because he sticks with mild salsa. He said his 3-year-old son Landon was fond of the corn salsa and his 5-year-old son Nolan was keen on the chips.

Terry Engelken, another salsa fanatic at Thursday?s market, said he had never tasted cherry salsa before, just raspberry salsa. Engelken said he can eat spicy salsa but that he doesn?t like it too spicy.

?I cook jalapeños on the grill,? he said. ?When I grill hamburgers, I put the jalapeños next to them and then put them on my sandwich.?

Engelken said he?s going to make jalapeño jelly in the near future. He?s also had some bad experiences with hot peppers, such as the time he wiped his brow after cutting an habanero pepper.

?It burnt my brow for a couple of hours, so I won?t grow them again,? he said.

Lynn Loula likes spicy salsa and her husband, Rick, likes extremely hot salsa. Their friends try and try to find food that?s too spicy Rick can?t eat it but so far they have failed.

?He likes it hotter than anybody in the world,? she said. ?He goes to China, where there are all kinds of hot food, and people are always trying to find something Rick won?t eat, and they never can. We say that he has no taste buds left.?

Loula said that, contrary to what many people think, hot peppers are not hard on a person?s stomach but actually help with digestion. She did acknowledge that they can be dangerous if handled improperly. For instance, a person should not touch a jalapeño and then use that same hand to put in their contact lenses, because their eyes will hurt terribly.

Kierstan Peck prepared the cherry-based salsa and a zucchini-based salsa with a few jalapeño peppers. She said she likes to experiment with a variety of fruits in her cooking.

?Last year, I submitted a peach-pineapple salsa which came in third place,? she said. ?I know people like those fruit salsas.?