This past week was Canada Water Week, a week-long celebration of water from coast-to-coast-to-coast. This years theme was “Discover your water footprint.” What does this mean to you? A water footprint is that of an individual, community or business and equals the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by that individual or community or produced by the business.
That means more than just water you use in your home daily. All the food you eat, the clothes you buy and the products you use have a water footprint of their own, and when you consume them, that becomes part of your water footprint.
With that in mind, I wanted to come up with a recipe that used only local and small impact ingredients. I chose tomatoes because it seems they use the least amount of water- 13L per tomato. Yes, I feel that is still a large amount, but much better than 50L for one orange.
The tomatoes were all grown locally and the farmer insists he doesn’t not use a lot of water. What is a lot? I am not sure, but I am hoping his a lot and mine are the same. All the ingredients in the recipe were bought from my local farmer and they were all grown in Texas. One exception, which is an optional ingredient- the olive oil. However, the olives were grown and processed into olive oil in California not Italy. I feel good knowing that.
Local Sustainable Salsa
Ingredients
- 16 small or 4-5 medium tomatoes
- 1/2-1 bunch of cilantro, chopped
- 1/2 small red onion, finely diced
- 1/2 a large red pepper, chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- Freshly squeezed juice from 2 limes
- 1 Tbsp of olive oil
- 1 glass bowl
Directions
- Core, quarter, and remove the seeds from the tomatoes and place them in a glass bowl.
- Chop and dice the onions, garlic, cilantro and re peppers.
- Add them to the tomatoes and toss to combine.
- Juice the limes.
- Now, add the lime juice and oil to taste and toss again.
- Allow the flavors to develop at room temperature for about an hour before serving.
You can now eat it as a salad, or pair it with some non-GMO tortillas or make your own pita chips! Whatever floats your boat!
Enjoy!
Shared with- Sustainable Ways Wednesday, The Green Backs Gal, Some What Simple, Reduce Footprints
farmers market, farming, local, recipe, sustainable, vegetables
I am the Good Girl Gone Green. Seeing garbage cans overflowing with recyclables breaks my heart.
a water footprint? very interesting. I wrote a post about water not realizing it’s water week
ps. I’m having a Potluck Party, it would be great if you could come and share one of your amazing recipes
http://www.lifeologia.com/potluck-party-nutritious-delicious/
Yes, a water footprint! All linked-up!
Yummy! One of my favorite warm weather treats! That and fresh tomatoes (no store bought, yuck), basil and Mozzarella (I had to put that into a word document to spell it, omg!), drizzled in a bit of olive oil…The tomatoes and basil from my garden (watered with either rain water or the water I catch while warming up the tub or sink), Mozzarella from my cousin (she makes it, I probably should too) and olive oil from Italy…a few years back we bought my husband’s grandparents (they’re Italian) an olive tree in Italy. They ship them olive oil from it…so, that’s probably not eco friendly, but it’s a really great farm! That was before I knew about eco-ness.
Anyway, LOVE the peopletowel!!! Use code ambassadorwe3ax for 10% off 2 or more towels at their website!
I love farm fresh tomatoes!! Yum!
Ooh, your pictures make the salsa look scrumptious!
Thank you!
That looks so yummy! Going to have to tr it! Found you on the Sunday Stumble.
Thanks!
Yum! Loooove salsa! With all the tomatoes we grow on our farm, we make LOTS of salsa (and other tomato-inspired dishes)!!
Yummy, your own tomatoes!
Thank you for linking up with the Planet Weidknecht Weekend Hop!
This looks declicious! You can’t beat fresh non store tomatoes.
No you can’t.
This looks + sounds super delicious. Thanks so much for linking up <3
Thank you so much.
Yummy! I would love for you to link up to my Linky Party via: http://ourdelightfulhome.blogspot.com/2012/03/show-me-what-you-got-linky-party-7.html
Mrs. Delightful
http://www.ourdelightfulhome.blogspot.com
Thank you.
This looks so yummy! Thanks for linking up to our “Strut Your Stuff Saturday.” We love having you and hope you’ll be back next week! -The Sisters
Thank you!!
Get . A. Life.
If you think a TEXAS farmer doesn’t use “a lot” of water for growing TOMATOES, you are delusional.
All this sanctimony over relish.
***yawn***
When you do something REALLY meaningful, like curing cancer, make sure you congratulate yourself in another poorly photographed and badly written “post” in your widdle bloggie.
You won’t publish this, but you are the only one who needs to see it. You Greenies are an Ego Cult who have been badly infiltrated by early 20th century Progressive Socialists who lost their cause when the Cold War ended. If it wasn’t for you self congratulating each other and trying to end the free market flow of capital, where would you be? In line for your participation trophies, no doubt.
***WATER FOOTPRINT*** Jesus…..who gives a phuck?
Thanks for chiming in.
You’re a sport, I’ll give you that.
(NO sarcasm, intended)
@YayCapitalism, I have yet to read a negative comment on a green blog that actually offers a positive alternative to that which the commenter perceives as misguided or silly. Instead, it seems there is a certain kind of person that just likes to put down other people’s efforts without contributing anything helpful to the conversation. I’d love to hear your ideas about how to make the world a better place. And I’m not talking about curing cancer, unless you yourself actually happen to be a scientist working in that field. I’m talking about the small choices we make in our every day lives that add up to creating a nicer world. What are you doing to set a good example for the rest of us?
How about the small choice of NOT BUYING THE HYPE about COMPACT FLUORESCENT LIGHTBULBS?
The Crony Capitalists (not REAL, Free Market Capitalists) in bed with the last two corrupt Administrations like profits. And they figured up a new “crisis” to redirect $$ from local power companies back to GE’s coffers. And NBC, (owned by …um…GE!) is always nice enough to promote these profit transfer scam “lightbulbs” on their ANNUAL INFOMERCIAL called “GREEN WEEK”— coming up again soon, no doubt!
The CEO of GENERAL ELECTRIC, Jeffrey Immelt, persuaded the BUSH ADMINISTRATION (see? I am NO Party driven ideologue, I assure you!) to shift the profit of burning a common, harmless lightbulb in a customer’s house from the local ELECTRIC COMPANY, BACK TO GE! I gotta give him that…it was GENIUS $$$ !
Over its useful life, if a 20 cent lightbulb takes $6 worth of power to light, why not have our buddies from the country club who happen to be in Congress MANDATE A $6 lightbulb that only takes 20 cents to power? All the greentards will have a new status symbol and SOMEHOW they will think they are SAVING money by spending THE SAME AMOUNT up front on a bulb??? How does that make sense?? OH and that OBTW…DOES NOT LAST NEAR AS LONG AS THEY CLAIM IT DOES>>>>AND WHEN IT DOES BLOW>>> TAKES ***THIRTEEN STEPS*** and a CHEM SUIT TO PROPERLY DISPOSE OF?
Not to mention>>>
1. BUYING these new fancy bulbs disproportionately impacts the poor.
2. The poisonous bulbs will never be disposed of PROPERLY by 99% of consumers who are either ignorant of their mercury dangers or too lazy to care, thereby hurting children and animals in the immediate environment.
3. When they are thrown out in the regular garbage, THEY WILL POISON OUR GROUNDWATER IN OUR LOCAL COMMUNITIES>>>>>> COMMUNITIES THAT CEO’s like Jeffrey Immelt , George Bush and and Barrack Obama will NEVER LIVE IN. Dumps are usually in places where land values are lower, NOT THE HAMPTONS!!!!!!!!
4. An incandescent lightbulb was invented by an AMERICAN and they have been produced in AMERICA. But now, GE has taken their CFL manufacturing to CHINA costing jobs we need here and pocketing ever more cash and paying NO CORPORATE INCOME TAX IN 2010
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/general-electric-paid-federal-taxes-2010/story?id=13224558#.T35oz1E5DzI
So I AM CURING CANCER.
IN ADVANCE….. by not buying those ridiculous, underpowered, Big Corporate money grabbing, poisonous CFLs!!!!
I am trying to keep my children’s water drinkable. So never mind the “water footprint” I can pat myself on the back for, I am actually THINKING more than FEELING about the quality of the water. Water is not a finite resource, no matter what you may have learned in public school. CLEAN WATER, however, IS!!!!!
Is that a good enough “example” to set for you?
WATER is very important to me, and that is how I found the original article written up on this blog.
What IS NOT important to me is SYMBOLISM OVER SUBSTANCE. Al Gore is an energy hog, and George Bush is a closet greenie. Inconvenient facts, indeed.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp
I designed our passive solar home with a metal roof for catching better quality water and directing into a cistern below grade. This 2,200 gallon concrete basin was very $$$ but provides 60% of all the water we need in our home. Toilets, hose water for washing cars, watering my veg garden and some livestock all come from these tanks. In an emergency, I can filter and treat this water with a simple pool chemical available at any pool store and provide drinking water to my whole neighborhood.
So, NO, I do not carp on and on the way most greentards do…about all their “sacrifices” …like their “green Prius” whose battery —OBTW—is powered by electricity generated BY A COAL FIRED POWER PLANT or whose very short lived BATTERY will poison landfills for EONS into the future. But hey…don’t worry yourself with that…funny how that TAX CREDIT was exactly the PREMIUM amount of $$$ you paid over the price of a comparable gas only compact…..so we tax payers are subsidizing your status symbol and lining Toyota’s pockets….NO WORRIES!
Please people. THINK! Do your homework and don’t be bullied by Corporate sponsored pop culture that would have you believe that a mercury laced lightbulb will save the planet, a Prius is actually green, and that Al Gore…a man with a 20 room mansion (plus another in California!) is actually an environmentalist.
@YayCapitalism Your home sounds really cool. I’ll bet if you blogged about it, you could teach a lot of people. I’m not saying you should blog, but just that using ourselves to set a public example for others is a way to magnify the personal steps we take as individuals. But I do think that the attitude with which the message is delivered is important. I tell my husband all the time, “You can either be right, or you can get people to do what you want, but not always both.” You could explain your ideas about light bulbs and water and all kinds of other environmental issues in a way that inspires people to change, rather than dismissing you as a jerk. None of us is perfect, and many of us are on different points along the “green” path.
For myself, the Prius issue is moot because I don’t own any car. And for the past 5 years I have been living almost completely plastic-free, meaning not acquiring new plastic products or packaging. This year, I have a book coming out to explain the reasons why and to show people how I’ve gotten here. I’m not telling you this to toot my own horn but to explain that I think we can inspire people to make changes in their own lives through the public, positive examples we set.
I think that instead of denigrating “green” bloggers who are trying to learn to live lightly on the earth and be part of a discussion, you could enter the discussion in a way that is helpful, informative, and motivating to others. You obviously have a lot of knowledge to share.
Actually, Ms. Terry, I began keeping a web log in late 2003 before “blogs” were cool. I worked for three Foundations in D.C. and shuttered my blog in late 2006 when my writing—caustic though you may find it—actually garnered enough attention that I was hired to write full time. My blunt opinions wrapped around “inconvenient truths” are what made my professional writing voice powerful enough that I was hired away, yet again in 2009.
After spending more hours in front of Congress and making love to Mac one too many weekends in a row, I retired almost a year ago to work from my farm and take only the cherry assignments that sound intriguing enough to pack pantyhose into a suitcase.
All politics IS local (h/t Tip!) and I have turned the bullhorn on myself so to speak. Because while the UNELECTED EPA is working very diligently to ruin America’s economic recovery at the behest of a MUCH LARGER INTERNATIONAL MACHINE than Miss Jane Greenie Granolahead can even comprehend, I am advocating for the TRUTH of SCIENCE on a local level. I spend my free time (!) in my state capital pressuring our Governor to levy extra fees on CFL bulbs expressly for the future SUPER FUND we are going to need to clean up all the “good intentions” of annoying Liberals who need to feel “part of something” by buying their poisonous lightbulbs to show off to their neighbors.
Yes, I denigrate them because they don’t THINK…they just join the HERD MENTALITY that is spoon fed to them by a complicit Media. Greenie Weenies are not thoughtful as perhaps you may be, Ms. Terry. They wag their superior (and hypocritical) lifestyle in your face. They MANDATE that you do as they SAY, and not as they DO—-***AlGore***. And there are FAR TOO MANY “Occupy Wall Streeters” banging away at their widdle vanity blogs about the evils of BIG BUSINESS>>>on their BIG BUSINESS CREATED MacBooks, drinking their BIG BUSINESS created STARBUCKS Mochalattechinomachiatos. USEFUL. IDIOTS. ALL.
I tend to think that there are those of us who live intentionally as a gift to our children. And I don’t need, nor am I inclined to document my every discovery about “lightening my footprint (another PR fallacy)”. I do what I do without fanfare. And when the Liberal neighbors who hate my loud diesel truck need a lift when their power is out and they can’t charge their tampon on wheels, I will gladly show them how my sons and I have made biodiesel from corn WE GREW. My husband will even help them modify their Prius into a gasification engine that runs on…..WOOD! It smells and it isn’t going to gain them STYLE points with the other soccer mommies, but it is far more “green” than a mass produced, Government subsidized CHEVY VOLT will ever be.
So perhaps you can see why I pass on the vanity blogging that most bored housewives have SUDDENLY discovered (**Are yooooou on FACE BOOK, Thelma?*** OMG!!! LOL!) Most are vapid self aggrandizing wastes of good server space. But I will confess, well photographed and well written blogs are a guilty pleasure, since I burned my television back when Bush was elected the second time around…gag! (And this has GOT to be a record for a comment thread…jeeez!)
Oh…and…***deep curtsey*** I make a VERY GOOD living being a “jerk”. Because at the end of the day, if one can’t argue the INCONVENIENT FACTS, it matters not at all what epithet someone may hurl, because at that point, they are clearly out of anything more substantive to say. The TRUTH will set you free….right after it makes you mad.
So if the mere fact that I have been so $wildly successful$ doing it “my way” leads me to dismiss out of hand your suggestion that I need to check my delivery, I hope you will forgive me.
But your concern is noted.
***I yield back the balance of my time, Good Girl, and thank you AGAIN for your tolerant hospitality***
Yes, that is a pretty long comment. I tend not to delete comments off my blog even if I do not respond. Instead of trying to comment and all that, I am going to send you an email. The email address you have entered is in fact valid? Thanks for all your thoughts. Got me thinking myself, actually!
Thank you so much for linking up with Favorite Thing Friday last week. These look delicious.
Thank you
Thank you for your submission on Nourishing Treasures’ Make Your Own! Monday link-up.
Check back later tonight when the new link-up is running to see if you were one of the top 3 featured posts!
Thanks for the feature and mention!
We collect rainwater, here on our farm, and use that to water many of our plants. The only precaution there is to make sure the container for collection is clean and covered – to prevent it from becoming a mosquito breeding ground.
Thanks for linking to Time Travel Thursday.
Blessings,
Liz @ The Brambleberry Cottage
That is awesome that you collect rainwater! I am sure that must be pretty gross if there is a mosquito party going on in the water!
Always a fan for salsa. Great recognition of the water footprint. I know that could definitely use some more recognition in my area, especially after the winter we just had. Thanks!
Thank you so much!