Green Tomato Tonight

I took the next two days off from work. HOORAY! I wish it was to hang out with my dog in the backyard and cook, but unfortunately I've got a lot of writing to do for school. However, tonight is time to let loose and play a bit so I'm going to do something with all of those tomatoes and peppers we harvested over the weekend. Still trying to decide exactly what recipe to use, but it will be some kind of green tomato salsa or relish. This looks like an interesting recipe, made with green apples:

http://foodiefarmgirl.blogspot.com/2005/09/saving-harvest-green-tomato-relish.html
Pros: we have all the ingredients and it sounds yummy. Cons: We'll have to buy small jars.

Or, there are these options from the Bell Blue Book:
Red Tomatoes Packed in Their Own Juice:
Pros: uses up our red tomatoes and we have all the ingredients and jars. Cons: None. p. 22

Piccalillli or Green Tomato Relish:
Pros: We have all the ingredients, if you include a gianourmous head of cabbage we got a couple weeks ago in Lancaster, except celery seed. Cons: We only have ground celery seed, not whole like the recipe calls for and the Blue Book says not to substitute. The cabbage is old, though it still looks good. p.52

Dilled Green Tomatoes:
Pros: We can use the green grape tomatoes for this one. Cons: It calls for canning salt and fresh dill or dill seeds, but we only have kosher salt and dried dill leaves. p. 54

OR
Pickled Green Tomato-Hot Pepper Mix
Pros: Uses all our hot peppers, and we have all the ingredients. Cons: Calls for 4 pounds of peppers, but does not say how many peppers that would be, or how many cups, etc. and we have no scale. p. 84

So my little analysis here tells me that we probably need to make at least three of these to use everything up. The red tomatoes in their own juices for sure. The Dilled Green tomatoes is my second choice, if we can find the right spices, or just take our chances with the substitutions. The final choice would be between Pickled Mix or Picallili. Maybe the thing to do is to go to the store and see if we can get whole spices, if not try to get small jars, and if neither of those work then try with the substitutions. Sounds like a plan to me, I better get on it!

Will update the blog with the results as soon as they're done!

UPDATE: Well, after the store last night I was too tired to do all of this. I'm procrastinating my schoolwork and trying again tonight. Instead of canning the red tomatoes I've decided to freeze them. It will be easier and maybe even tastier. I got these instructions once again thanks to a thread on theppk. com- http://www.pickyourown.org/freezingtomatoes.htm The hardest part is going to be skinning the grape tomatoes but there are only a few red ones so that should be fine.

We did manage to buy the very last pack of small ball jars at Target so I'm going to make a double of farmgirl's relish recipe. It will have to be that one instead of the Picallili b/c it turns out the cabbage had grey moldy-looking spots on it. :-( Oh, how I hate wasting food, but I just didn't have the time to cook more than 1/4 of that great big cabbage.

We're definitely also going to try the dilled green tomatoes recipe for all of the green grape tomatoes. I have no idea what they'll taste like, but I'm hoping they'll be kind of like tart dill olives that I can put in salad this winter. We couldn't find whole dill seeds but were able to get fresh dill instead so, that's the new plan. Once again, I better get on it.

Update 2: Oh My Garden. Farmgirl's green tomato relish recipe is DELICIOUS! We finished that, dilled green grape tomatoes and froze the red tomatoes. Will post details and pictures soon.