We planned out the menu, wrote down the list of ingredients we needed, and went shopping. We shopped at Econo Foods for produce and Walmart for everything else.
The boys were thrilled to ride in the rad car cart at Econo.
We got home and it was game time. Israel began working on his salsa.
He decided to make salsa verde, made with: roasted tomatillos, poblanos, purple onions & garlic, fresh cilantro, and some other secret ingredients that I am unable to disclose. Our house smelled rockin’.
Here, Israel is delicately peeling the skin off this poblano pepper.
This was the final product ready for competition!
All the while, we boiled the daylights out of this can to make cajeta, a Mexican candy.
Over 3 hours later…the cajeta was done and ready for tasting. But we used the rest to make an ice cream.
We made nachos for our fiesta with homemade chips and cheese.
Sangria was our beverage of choice for Cinco de Mayo 2011.
We ended our meal with homemade cajeta ice cream.
Then, we were off to the library to drop off Israel’s salsa at 5pm.
He was entered in the “medium” category.
The tasting didn’t start until 6pm, so to ease his nerves, Israel played with the library toys.
The doors opened at 6pm and people began pouring in to the free tasting and voting. Each person received 10 tickets and were asked to place tickets in jars next to their favorite salsas.
Micah did us proud by eating 3 bowls of chips & salsa and lemonade making this venture well worth the financial investment. I was going to take more pictures of Israel’s ticket jar and all the other salsa entries, but somebody kept giving me the stink eye. Here’s a hint: he sleeps next to me. So, this is the last picture.
We went home early to put the boys to bed and waited to hear the results of the ticket count. The next morning, behold, Israel received a phone call to acknowledge that he had won!! Later in the day, Manu and I went to pick up his awesome “On the Border” prize basket.
We were so proud of him. 
T’was a tiring, but happy Cinco de Mayo!
Ok. This post was riveting. I nearly had to reach thru to the pic of the library toys to calm my own spectator nerves.Any competition involving a Namm family member is sure to be intense, this is what I have learned.
Yay!! Awesome job guys! 🙂 Looks like it was a lot of fun, too! Now I’m wondering what the secret ingredient was… :p
there weren’t any nerves, kendra (can i call you kendi? — like “candy” in korean accent?). it wasn’t all that serious. for one, most people didn’t even make mexican salsa — they made other kinds of salsa with mango, beans, and other types of funny things. for two, we weren’t really expecting to win :)salsa was easy to make and very common: poblanos, tomatillos, garlic, onions — broiled in oven (top rack 10 mins on each side). charred stuff pealed. good stuff blended (pulsed) with salt and cilantro. that’s it.