Green tomato pickles

We made pickles based on Betty Crocker bread and butter pickles and this recipe.



10 lbs. green tomatoes - sliced 3/8 inch thick

3 cucumber - sliced 1/4 inch thick

3 Walla Walla onions - sliced 1/8 inch thick

6 c. vinegar

3.5 c. sugar

2 t. tumeric

2 t. celery seed

2 T. mustard - used mix of black and yellow seeds



Salt the tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions 4 hours. Drain liquid and rinse lightly. Start water boiling in canner. Sterilize jars 10 min. While jars are sterilizing heat vinegar, sugar, and spices. Once vinegar is boiling add the veggies, return to boil. Pack hot pickle mix into hot jars, top off with vinegar. Boiling water process 10 min. Made 11 pints.

We made 2 batched of vinegar and processed half of the pickles at a time which meant we could pack 6 pints at a time which is one processing load for our canner.

Green tomato salsa

Alright this is more of a record for us for next year. One jar of salsa didn't seal-the lid was flawed from the get go but we tried anyway- which has allowed us to sample fully processed salsa. It's great, really really good heat and flavor if I don't say so myself.



20 c. chopped green and partially ripe tomatoes (~12 lbs)

6 c. finely chopped onions (2 Walla Walla, 3 regular yellow)

14 fire roasted Serrano peppers

1/2 bulb garlic

2/3 can chipotles with sauce

1/3 c. cumin seed

1/4 c. salt

1/4 c. pepper

1 T. coriander

4 c. lime juice

1/2 - 1 c. cider vinegar



We ran the onion, garlic, and peppers through the food processor for a fine chop. Then cooked the tomatoes, onion mix, and spices for approximately 45 min. Just before we started packing the sterilized jars, we added the lime juice and vinegar because I was afraid to cook off the acidity. Process the jars in boiling water canner 15 min at sea level. Made 13 and a bit pints.

We're still working on a name for the salsa and label design.

The results of the end of the year canning.

Green tomato salsa on the left. Green tomato pickles on the right.

Ken Burns is one sexy little elf

Last night and tonight I've been watching and loving Ken Burns' new documentary on the national parks. After a mere 4 hours I'm going out on a limb and declaring it fab-u-lus.
Check it out http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/

Another 14 pounds

I'll post picures from last weeks harvest-I made tomato juice and gazpacho. The tomato juice was incredible but the gazpacho was just ok. I'm trying to decide what to do with this haul. The neighbors took a few pounds but that still leaves a lot of tomatoes. I'm torn between roasting the tomatoes and/or making more tomato juice. Hummm

12 pounds of tomatoes

Here's yesterdays harvest

Tomato review 2009

I'll post some pictures later but since I just ate one of nearly every variety we planted I thought this would be a good time to review them.



Brandywine-best taste, fruit are big (some over a pound) but bruise easily, may be more disease prone

Dr. Wynches yellow - big, lots of fruit that ripened early

Paul Robeson - should be black but only the first few tomatoes were darker than the purple calabash, flavor is pretty bland and texture was pretty mushy

Purple calabash - interesting color and shape, decent flavor and texture

Peach - yellow fuzzy medium-small tomato, very sweet with no core

Green zebra - meaty tasty green and yellow stripped tomato, inside completely green when ripe

Roma - we only planted one which isn't providing nearly enough salsa tomatoes for us, we'll plant more next year, good flavor, very meaty, prolific

Mexican midget - small cherry, great flavor balanced sweet and acid, prolific but not as many here where it doesn't get really hot-this tomato loves heat and sun

White currant - small white/light yellow cherry, very sweet, thin skin, needs to be eaten quickly because the skin generally splits when it's picked



I'm going to try seed saving this year so we'll see how that goes next spring when I plant those seeds. We talked about reducing the varieties of tomatoes for next year but I really like nearly all the ones we planted. The Paul Robeson and white currants are the only ones that I'm willing to drop.