Sunday, October 11, 2009

GREEN TOMATOES


We had a fine crop of green tomatoes in the town garden this year, so I decided it was time to make another batch of green tomato mincemeat. I've been doing so on an occasional basis since Mike and I were married.


I started this morning by straightening the kitchen and organizing the ingredients. I chopped the tomatoes and apples with my old Sunbeam Kitchen Center. Then I mixed all the ingredients together in my largest stock pot – almost not big enough.


This is what the mixture looked like as it began to simmer.





And this is what it looked like after simmering 1 ½ hours.



I put up 4 ½ quarts of green tomato mincemeat. I probably wouldn't bother just for myself, but Mike also likes mincemeat. And it beats trying to ripen the tomatoes by wrapping them in newspaper. I've never been successful at that. Over the weekend I also made two more batches of elderberry jelly, zucchini bars, and zucchini banana bread. KW

5 comments:

debdog42 said...

You don't need to wrap the tomatoes to ripen them up. I just leave mine in a box.

Kathy said...

I thought you would give me a bad time about the green tomato mincemeat, Deb. I wrapped a few tomatoes that looked like they would ripen, but I left the rest -- probably 10 pounds -- in a brown paper sack.

Richard responded to this post by email. Here's what he wrote: "As an old southern boy, I grew up knowing about fried green tomatoes. But only in the last couple of years have I discovered the joy of grilled green
tomatoes. A light coating of olive oil, liberal application of seasoning of your preference (one good one is Cavender's greek seasoning), and pop them on a grill for a few minutes until there is a good grill mark on each side. When done, a slice a quarter of an inch thick will sag slightly when picked up with tongs."

debdog42 said...

Oh no Kathy, you gotta take them out of that sack. They need to be single layer in a box. Best is not touching but for sure a single layer.

I didn't want to mention anything about that green tomato (shudder) mincemeat. Stuff should be illegal! HAHAHA!!!

Kathy said...

So noted -- about the tomatoes in the sack. However, they're on the farm and I'm here. I was going to chop up some of them and freeze for quick bread, but we don't have room in the freezer. When it comes to space, grated garden products must give way to meat.

Nellie agrees with you on the green tomato mincemeat. "What are you thinking here, Kathy? This stuff is inedible." She has much the same opinion of rhubarb.

debdog42 said...

Rhubars is nasty stuff too! Nellie is one smart dog! LOL!