Every now an then the planets align and I get in the mood for making my own salsa <strong><em>and</em></strong> have all the ingredients to make it as well.  I have been getting a bit lazy when it comes to my cooking and I am in my "roasting phase."  Pretty much everything I cook goes into the oven... easy to do and easy to clean-up (especially since I'm not the one doing the dishes).

So what do you need?  Please keep in mind that I eye-ball every time I cook, so there are no amounts and measurements and I encourage eye-balling everything yourself as well!

tomatoes (of course)

onion

garlic

spicy peppers of some sort (this time I had Thai chilies)

fresh cilantro

lemon or lime

oil of course

and then all your usual seasonings, like salt, pepper, &amp; dried oregano

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First thing (after you clean all your veggies) cut your tomatoes and onion into quarter pieces.  Lay them out on your baking sheet along with your garlic, onion, and peppers.  Drizzle with oil, in this case I used avocado oil and olive oil.  Then sprinkle with salt, pepper and dried oregano.  Now- lets talk about these chili peppers for a bit.  I have never used Thai chilies for salsa before (but spicy is spicy right?!) so I wasn't sure how many to use.  So what did I do?  I roasted all of them.  You don't have to add them all to your salsa, you can taste as you blend.

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Pop it into the 350 degree oven (uncovered) until it looks like this:

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Then put all the roasted ingredients in a bowl and add a little more oil, olive or avocado, you choose... maybe you want to mix it up this time and add garlic oil..... ooooooooh... aaaaaaaaaah....

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Then with a handy hand-blender (love this tool!) just blend the ingredients until it reaches the texture you desire.  Make sure you pulverize out all the bits of chili, you don't wanna get a mouth full of that.  Hot!  If you don't have a hand-lender don't worry- you can use a food processor.  If you don't have a food processor, don't worry- you can use a blender (but it gets a bit foamy, so pulse it instead of blending it.  If you don't have a blender, don't worry- you can use a hand-blender.

Then squeeze in a generous amount of lime or lemon (to taste), make sure there is enough salt and the flavor is good.  I love fresh herbs so I piled it on with chopped cilantro and scallions, yum!  Serve with your favorite bowl of chips.  I just discovered these yummy quinoua tortilla chips at Trader Joe's.  What a combo!

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I hope you enjoy my lazy roasting salsa recipe!