Green Tomato Canning 2009

This year we made Farmgirl Susan's Green Tomato Relish (front) again, as well as a new recipe for Green Tomato Salsa (back). Once again, I got overwhelmed with all the chopping and my sweet husband ended up doing most of it for me.

We used this recipe I found on the Gardenweb forums for the salsa, except I changed it to be 6 cups green tomatoes and 3 cups onions, (instead of 5 & 4) because that seemed to be a lot of onions for my taste. I checked the Blue Book, which said the tomatoes are more acidic than onions, so I figured it was a safe substitution. We only got 4 pints out of it instead of 5 like it says. This is the full recipe:

Green Salsa

Yield: 5 pints

6 cups chopped green tomatoes
1 1/2 cups seeded, chopped long green chiles
1/2 cup seeded finely chopped jalapeños
3 cups chopped onions
1 cup bottled lemon juice
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 Tbsp ground cumin*
3 Tbsp oregano leaves *
1 Tbsp salt
1 tsp black pepper

Combine all ingredients in a large saucepan and stir frequently over high heat until mixture begins to boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Ladle hot salsa into pint jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Adjust lids and process in a boiling water canner 15 minutes at 0-1,000 feet altitude; 20 minutes at 1,001-6,000 feet; 25 minutes above 6,000 feet.

The relish was once again delicious, and the salsa wasn't bad either! It was definitely tart, which might not be to everyone's liking. However I really like tart things, and so does my partner, so we both thought it was very tasty.

I had it on burritos with spanish rice, roasted frozen bell peppers from the garden, onions & potatoes with oregano & cumin, and Soyrizo. The peppers, onions & potatoes came out so tender and tasty!

The only thing I did different this time was roasting them on 425 instead of 375 or 400. The higher temp was just right. I think it took about 40 minutes - stirred once in the middle.


Here's the whole burrito. It was so big I could hardly fold it into a wrap. I had to eat it with a fork and knife. Mmm just looking at it is making my mouth water. I love Mexican food!

Final Haul on a Frosty November Morning

Turns out it already frosted last night. I went out bright and early this morning to pick as much as I could before work, and discovered a light frost on everything. Above you can see it on the nasturtiums, already starting to melt in the sun around 7:30 AM. And here is even more on the shady side of the garden:
Considering last night was only expected to go down to 42 degrees or so, and tonight is supposed to go down to 35 - I'm pretty sure we'll get a killing frost tonight. So I desperately picked and picked this morning. Here's the haul so far - not pictured is a huge bowl of kung pao peppers, and I still haven't gotten to any of the edible flowers or herbs. I can't wait to make green tomato salsa, relish, and fried green tomatoes. Yum. Clockwise from the top left: (yellow bowl) red grape tomatoes, (tupperware) jalapenos, (counter) bell peppers, (blue bowl) Roma tomatoes, (pink bowl) yellow grape tomatoes and (silver bowl) Rutger's tomatoes:
It was actually quite lovely out there this morning, once I dragged myself out from under the warm fuzzy covers. The sun was beautiful, streaming through the frosty air. It was a very enjoyable way to start the day. Too bad I'm always so sleepy and can't haul myself out of bed earlier to have breakfast out there every morning!

Tonight's Dinner: Quick Taco Special

Ok, this one is really going to be short, still b/c of these darn reports. (almost done!!)

Not even sure if this really counts as a blog post, but I'm going to fudge it a bit and say this does add to my veganmofo count.


Tonight I had crispy tacos, one of my favorite things to eat. I hadn't had them in a long time due to fried tortilla-type things being off limits to my diet, so this was really a special treat. (the good news is my diet is working - I lost 20lbs so far and it has been staying off. Just 10 more to go)


I don't have a picture since I ate them so fast but they involved spanish rice w/ spiced chili beans, shredded spinach, sprouts, diced red onion, and the stars of the show: chopped red and yellow grape tomatoes fresh from the garden, and the delicious green tomato salsa I made last year! Almost unbelievable, but it was as good as the day I made it! Gotta love preserving.

Looking at the pictures from last year about how I made this salsa really makes me realize how disappointing the tomato crop was this year from all the bad weather. I have maybe 10 green roma tomatoes on the vine, and no Rutger's at all. Nothing like last year - just look at 'em all.... *sigh*


I'll update this blog with some pictures of this years tomato crop soon.

The Garden that Keeps on Giving

I can't even believe it. We're expected to get snow tonight, and even though I picked everything I thought possible before the last frost almost a month ago, yesterday I still got an entire bowl full of veggies from the garden!

I picked this assortment of bell peppers to the left (green now, but hopefully will turn orange like they are supposed to after a little stay in a paper bag) and Italian green frying peppers on the right:
Then these habaneros. The ones towards the bottom, not in the tupperware- were picked just yesterday off of the plants left untouched outside in the garden. The really orange ones in the tupperware at the top of the pic were taken off of a plant we pulled out of the ground before the first frost mentioned a couple posts ago, and placed in a bucket full of water in the basement. At first they were green, but sure enough turned orange after about 2 weeks, and still look pretty decent as you can see. We need to make them into hot sauce or freeze them or something as soon as possible though. There were actually more of them that my crazy hot-loving husband has been eating all along as garnish on pretty much every meal (seriously- be puts them on his hash browns in the morning, and again on his pasta at night) . I still have yet to even touch them (and have no intention to do so!)

Finally, even more green grape tomatoes!!! This plant was like the little engine grape tomato that could. This whole bowlful was just picked yesterday on November 16th, and on top you can even see two red ones! Amazing to think that we've been harvesting red grape tomatoes from this same plant since early summer. Just Wow.

Green Tomato Preserves: TAH DAH!

You might remember these tomatoes from the pre-frost harvest last weekend. There were actually at least twice as many green grape tomatoes but I didn't get all of them in a picture together.

Well it took a few days, but my partner and I finally got it together and turned them all into preserves. This is the first time either of us had ever attempted real home canning. Athough my husband's father has, and hubz had watched him do it. So at least that was something.

We followed the Bell Blue Book as well as we could, but not as well as it said we should. I noticed on like every other page it admonished the reader to follow the recipes exactly and use absolutely no substitutions. We couldn't really do that though, as we don't have a scale. So we had to approximate measures as best we could. That was the toughest part. The other thing it said was to use the fruits and veggies immediately after picking them, which we didn't manage either. I'm hoping we did ok though, and won't get botulism. It seems to me as long as their is plenty of vinegar and lemon in there, and they were boiled long enough, we're probably ok. I hope.

The first thing we did was separate out the red tomatoes, and place them in boiling water for 30 - 60 seconds. Let them cool, then proceeded to peel, chop and deseed. Finally they were placed in a Ziploc freezer bag, and as much air was squeezed out as possible. Here they are after freezing for two days, looks pretty good. I think they'll make a good sauce in November.

Next we took care of the green grape tomatoes. Well, hubz actually did this one while I tried to work on my paper. As described in the last post about this, we used the dilled green tomato recipe from the blue book. The biggest problem I anticipate here is that my partner, bless his little heart, didn't realize a head of fresh dill equals more than a single sprig. When he was already done I looked in the refrigerator and noticed half the bunch of fresh dill we bought was still there. If it had been me I would have just split the whole bunch up between each jar, but what are you going to do. I guess they'll just be more tart than dill. Hopefully they'll be edible! Here are pics of them boiling and the finished product.










Last but not least we tackled farmgirl's green tomato relish. Once again hubz mostly took care of it, but this time I hovered a bit to help when he needed it. It was a lot of chopping, that's for sure! But in the end we used up everything but a few cayennes and habaneros, so it was totally worth it. We didn't want to use quart jars, because it would be hard to eat all of that just between two of us in a week or two once it was opened. So we had to use half pint jars because that is all they had left in the store. I think this will probably work out better since the "relish" really came out like a thick, intensely flavorful sauce.

There was so much of it, we couldn't fit it all in one boiling water bath so put the leftover in a quart jar and ate that for dinner on a Mexican pizza. Thank goodness, after all that work, it really was super delicious! Somehow a couple slightly pink tomatoes got leftover, and a half-ripe orange bell pepper. So I also chopped those and cooked them with a box of Spanish Rice a Roni instead of a can of tomatoes, which again I am happy to report tasted extremely yummy . We had that on top of toasted hard corn tortillas, with black beans, corn, black olives, the relish and fresh cilantro. The thickness of the relish was slightly applesauce-y, and with just the right amount of sweetness from the apples too. I really enjoyed the texture since usually store-bought green tomato salsas are too watery. But it still had that great green tartness. MMM it was good. Those 3 MMMs are for the three pizzas I ate!

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.

Do I love my garden or what?!?

Here it is, all covered up for protection from the possible frost. We worked on it all day. I hope this helps. Of course, knowing Murphy's law, we probably did all of this for nothing. But better safe than sorry I figure.

We really need to get a thermometer for the backyard so I can tell the difference between the local forecast and what's going on in the microclimate of my garden. The Master Gardener's hotline told me it can vary widely, depending on fencing, whether or not you are on a hill, etc. At this point I really don't know how it is here. Although I can tell you I am sitting outside right now next to a blazing chiminea and it is cooooold! (Yeah, my husband is a computer geek and he set us up with super high speed wireless internet out back. Pretty cool huh!)

We also harvested everything we could. Well not quite everything, we purposely left some green tomatoes, basil, peppers, etc. to see if they would survive as an experiment. I didn't harvest any thyme or oregano either, I figured they'd weather the frost and give me a little more time to do it next weekend. There still sure was a lot to process though! We froze the parsley, will puree the basil with a little oil and freeze (hubby is working on that right now), diced the chives and tarragon for butter (earth balance vegan butter of course), put the rosemary in red vinegar, set the lavender, sage, calendula and marigolds on screens to dry, and saved the peppers/green tomatoes for salsa and roasting tomorrow. PHEW!

As for the habaneros, we picked the plant that had the most pods closest to being ripe and pulled the whole thing out of the ground. Then put it in a bucket filled with water and placed that in the basement. As mentioned in the last post, from what I read this should make them turn ripe quickly. I hope it works! We left several other plants in the ground and covered them so hopefully they will survive too. Here's the habanero in the bucket, and my dog JJ. Don't worry, we didn't let him eat any. :-)

Fried Green Tomatoes & Salsa

This is a closeup of fried green tomatoes with fresh salsa on top. All the tomatoes, green pepper, and jalapenos came from the garden. This was the first time I'd ever had fried green tomatoes and wow were they delicious! They were a bit tart but not too much, plus crispy on the outside and soft inside. Just right. I really liked how the citrus in the salsa topping helped to lighten the greasy fried-ness of it. Now that it is fall and we've got lots of green tomatoes on the vine that probably won't turn ripe before the first frost, I'll definitely be making these again.

I used this recipe for the fried green tomatoes from Pamela Cooks! blog. Thanks Pamela.
Here is my own salsa "recipe" though I just make it to taste so I'm just guessing on the measurements:

• 2 cups chopped tomatoes (it is much better if you have the time to do it by hand, not the food processor)


• 1/3 - 1/2 cup finely chopped red or white onion, or scallions


• 1/4 - 1/2 cup chopped italian green frying peppers (or bell)


• 1 jalapeno, seeds removed and minced


• 1 or 2 cloves of minced garlic


• handful of roughly chopped cilantro


• Juice of 1 lime


• teaspoon of cider vinegar


• salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients together and enjoy.

I ate them sitting outside next to the garden as part of a wonderful brunch on a gorgegous sunny Sunday. Pictured clockwise from the top: Grilled Smoky Tempeh (from Veganomicon) on a potato pancake topped with more salsa, swiss chard also grown in the garden sauteed with leftover smoky marinade, red onions and garlic, the green tomatoes, and a homemade white corn muffin. YUM!