Salsa for dinner, homemade lotion

It's still cloudy, no rain yet today though. Just enough change in barometer to kick my b__t. I picked tomatoes and peppers from the garden, and combined with some store bought ingredients made some marvelous salsa! I don't like really hot salsa, but nice and spicy is good. Here's my recipe:

1/2 lb. tomatoes, roma's preferably
3-4 teaspoons chile mix
2 poblano peppers
2 tsp. salt
2-4 New Mexico peppers
2 tsp black pepper
1-2 Bell peppers
2 tsp onion salt or powder
2 onions
2-3 cloves garlic
1 bunch cilantro
2 stalks celery

Blend garlic and onions in a food processor until chopped but not pureed. Move into large bowl. Remove veins and seeds from all peppers, cut into large pieces, then chop in food processor with celery, add to bowl. Cut and seed tomatoes, chop in processor along with cilantro. Add tomatoes to the bowl, blend all vegetables together while adding spices. You can add more or less spices and hot peppers to taste. I like to serve this fresh, but you can cook it over the stove if you choose.
Just be aware, that I rarely use a formal recipe and this is a taste-as-you-go project.

Julie, her mom Barb and I made olive oil, lavender and oatmeal soap last Wednesday. Julie's been wanting to learn how to make soap, so they came over for the day. We made 18 pounds of soap! It's more time consuming than difficult, but it's so much easier when I have help with the process. While we were waiting for it too cool and thicken, we also made lotion with coconut, shea, cocoa butters, almond oil and glycerin. It turned out really good! It's thinner than I planned; I thought it would be more like body butter, but it's really yummy and I put some in a lotion bottle with pump and it worked great.

Body Cream

7 ozs. Shea butter
3 ozs. Cocoa butter
6 ozs. Almond oil
7 ozs. Coconut butter
5 tsp. grated Beeswax
6 ozs. Vegetable glycerin
21 ozs. distilled water
1 tsp Cornstarch
40 grams Stearic Acid
1/4 oz. mint or lavender essential oil- or scent of your choice

Have 3 separate mixing containers, 2 that are microwave safe. In the larger container, #1, add the shea butter, cocoa butter, coconut oil, stearic acid and almond oil. Melt them using 1 minute increments, stirring between minutes. Stir until everything is melted, including the granules of stearic acid. In a small separate bowl melt the beeswax in 1 minute increments. Once melted, quickly blend into the other oils. In container #3 blend distilled water, corn starch and glycerin, then slowly blend everything into the deepest container, using stick blender or regular mixer. Make sure the container has deep sides and wear an apron! It helps to set the container in a bowl 1/2 full of ice, and blend constantly until it is blended and thickened. Pour into bottles or jars, allow to set.

The stearic acid is actually a palm vegetable product, it isn't a chemical, so this whole lotion is chemical-free lotion that is just yummy. I use it on my face as well as a body lotion.