It would depend on the recipe. I hate to give that answer since I know it's not terribly helpful but some fruit relishes, for example, are primarily high-acid ingredients while vegetable relishes are low-acid. The same would be true of sauces and chutneys, etc. That's why you so often see recipes posted on the Forum with questions about whether certain ingredients can be eliminated, increased, etc. You do have some latitude to play around with things. Take your question about the heat of a salsa. Let's say the recipe called for 1 cup of sweet red pepper and 1/4 cup of hot peppers. You want it hotter and you aren't so crazy about sweet reds. The total amount of peppers is 1 1/4 cup, so you could have 3/4 cup of sweet reds and 1/2 cup of hot peppers. The total amount of low-acid veggies is the same. The important thing is you haven't changed the proportions of the recipe. Also be sure you don't change the preparation. Safe-tested recipes allow for some variation. For example, if the recipe says "chopped peppers" not everyone will chop the pieces the same size. But if you ground those peppers up instead, then a cup of ground peppers is a lot more by weight than a cup of chopped peppers. So, again, you've altered the proportions of the recipe and increased the ratio of low-acid vegetables. That can be risky. Or, as you suggested, you could add a good tablespoon or whatever of hot red pepper flakes. Just as you could adjust any other seasonings - less cumin, more peppercorns, etc. As long as the seasonings are dried, not fresh herbs. Carol

I agree, I'd just use the tomatoes. Squishing them all up would result in a paste like texture, not the chunky salsa that I make. In fact, I'd probably just chop 'em up and not worry about the skins, or slip the skins from the frozen tomatoes and chop them up, maybe drain a little. You will probably get a thinner "sauce" instead of the thick and chunky salsa, but it would still be good. ruthie, you are right, I just added the sauce and paste for texture, I wanted that thick/chunky salsa, not what we call "taco sauce" here, which is more runny and has smaller chunks of the veggies, or no chunks at all. Annie

Charcuterie, I've made this recipe many times and the amount I get varies from about six pints to about eight pints. I think it probably depends mostly on how watery the tomatoes are. Roma tomatoes are usually very meaty, and the fact that you got less than eight cups from 5 1/2 pounds suggests yours were quite meaty (I usually find about four pounds gives about eight cups). So my guess is that the liquid from the canned diced tomatoes is what made it have so much volume. If you had added more fresh tomatoes, they would have cooked down. Since the tomatoes you added were canned they were already cooked down, so they wouldn't have shrunk as much in cooking, if you see what I mean. I do think your salsa should be safe to eat. The added extra peppers is actually the one thing that goes against standard safety recommendations---peppers are a low-acid food, so if you have more peppers total compared to tomatoes than a recipe is tested for, you don't know for sure that it's acidic enough. But those cans of peppers in adobe are small, and you added extra acid, AND I know that Annie's recipe has a generous margin of error of extra acid. So while the standard answer is "you should never change anything in a tested recipe," I know that I, personally, would feel very happy eating your salsa. I'll be right over, in fact. ;-p Good luck, Zabby

trsinc, I've never tried making my own pectin, but I started making jam with no added pectin, just all fruit spread or some artificial sweetener if my fruit wasn't quite sweet enough. Apples have a lot of pectin, and I often add the rinds and seeds of my lemons after adding the lemon juice to the jam. Thanks to a tip from readinglady, I wrap the "stuff" up in cheesecloth and add it to the jam pot while my fruit macerates, and remove it before it jells. It adds a lot of natural pectin. Dad was diabetic, Amanda and Elery are both hypoglycemic, Elery's Dad, BIL and stepmom are all diabetic, so I've been working on spreads with less sugar. The only way to do that, besides Pomona's Pectin, is no commercial pectin. I've found that if I do the long cooked jam I can cut the sugar down to half and still get a decent jell, but it has to be watched closely. and yes, jams and jellies are safer products to can at home than things like green beans, because the acidity level prevents them from harboring the deadly botulism spores. Things like pickles, jam, jelly, relishes, canned fruit, all those can be done in a boiling water bath and cannot harbor botulism. They're very safe. If they get moldy, they could make someone sick, but you can't kill someone with them if cooked and processed according to directions. Canning is easy, economical, and I think it's fun. Go for it. Ann, I'm sure we'll have another "camp" of sometype soon... Annie