I buy it. I'd be stark raving mad if I was trying to first make tomato sauce and tomato paste and then make and can salsa. I usually buy organic paste and organic sauce at CostCo by the case. Sometimes I just buy it at Sam's Club in the huge cans sold to restaurants. It depends on how crazy life is at any given time, because the nearest Sam's is only about 30 or 40 miles away (depending on which one we go to) whereas the nearest CostCo is 80 miles away. Does it get expensive? Yes. However, we plan for it and budget for it, and what I normally do is stock up on paste and sauce over the winter months so that I'm not buying a lot in one summer month. Sometimes, when the tomato harvest is extra plentiful, I do find myself calling Tim at work in Dallas and asking him to stop at CostCo on the way home to pick up a case of sauce and 3 cases of paste. It's just a part of our summer---like higher utility bills. You have to remember that in the spring and summer, between fresh food from the garden and previously canned, frozen, dehydrated or root cellared food, we aren't buying much produce at all so the money that could be spent on produce is being spent on sauce and paste for salsa-making. Today we went grocery shopping at CostCo and Central Market and only bought two produce items: bell peppers for salsa-making and a watermelon because ours aren't ripe yet.

And, as far as I am concerned, the money we're spending in summer for paste and sauce for the salsa making is Christmas money being spent in advance because we give away around 150 jars of salsa at Christmas (and the same amount of either pickles, candied jalapenos, jam or jelly so everyone gets 1 jar of salsa and 1 jar of something else), so when I'm putting together those gift bags of home-canned goods for everyone, guess what I'm not doing? I'm not at the store or the mall spending money for gifts because I spent that money and time back in the summer.

If I'm smart and proactive, I'm also stocking up on vinegar, ReaLemon and ReaLime (you can specifically substitute ReaLemon and ReaLime for part or all of the vinegar in the Annie's Salsa recipe) in the spring when I'm doing my planting, and doing the same with canning salt, pepper, cumin and sugar. I like to have everything possible on hand when it is time to start making salsa because stopping to run to the store when there are no decent stores within a convenient driving distance chews up time that could be spent canning.

Thank you Okiedawn. I was just wondering about this. Also have you tried Wickles Pickles? I received a jar of pickled okra as a gift. I thought they were fantastic tasting so decided to make my own with a bread & butter pickle recipe and okra. It wasn't exactly the same but a close runner up. I made a few jars of pickled jalapeno's that weren't bad either. I used to have a neighbor that 'loved' pickled okra so I gave him a couple of jars of the bread & butter pickled okra and it blew his mind and that was all he wanted after that. His daughter used to make pickled okra for him and he ask her to make them with a bread & butter brine from then on. He died about a year ago and she was telling me about it a while back and couldn't imagine where he got such an idea. I said I had to apologize to her because I got him started on them. We had a good laugh about it.

You're welcome. I haven't tried Wickles Pickles. I have heard they are Wickedly Good, though.

I like just about anything that is pickled in a bread and butter brine. It drives my son crazy because he prefers dill to B&Bs, but I do make both, and Tim eats them all, so we all end up happy in the end.

I am routinely blamed for addicting many of our friends to Annie's Salsa, Candied Jalapenos, and Habanero Gold Jelly. I plead guilty as charged. Isn't that what friends do, though? If we don't share great products with our friends, what does that say about us? I am glad your friend got to enjoy B&B pickled okra. Just think of all the joy it brought him, and of what a happy memory this is for y'all now. That is a memory you'll always have.