What to do with green tomatoes?

Trying to grow tomatoes in a cold climate automatically means that you will end up with a lot of green tomatoes at the end of the season.  Even in this warmer climate, I wound up with many unripe tomatoes.  In the past few years, I've been experimenting with different things to do with these little guys, since I don't want to waste anything that can actually be used. 

Of course, there's the cool sounding fried green tomatoes, which I don't really care for unless they're not truly green.  Even when I do make them, I'm usually the only person that eats them, since they just look funny to everyone else.

In past research, I was surprised to find that the green taco sauce (that my dad has to have) is made from green tomatoes.  I found a few recipes online (this one is complicated.  There are simpler ones) and tried it out.  It turned out too hot for my kids, but the adults liked it.

I have also made green tomato relish, which tastes just like the relish that everybody loves on their hot dogs.  I'll post the recipe at the end of this post.  My mother has been busy canning jars of this all fall after my sister dumped a few boxes of green tomatoes in her lap.

Since the relish is already being covered, I decided that this year, I wanted to make mock raspberry jam with my green tomatoes.  Don't laugh, it really turns out looking and tasting like the real thing.  The texture is right and the tomato seeds look like raspberry seeds.  I couldn't find my recipe though, so I was thrilled to see the recipe posted at a friends blog, Home Maid Simple.  I guess I'd better get busy sorting and washing my tomatoes.

I have also just been informed that you can make a mock apple pie with green  tomatoes, but I don't think I'll try that just yet.

What have you done with your green tomatoes?

Green Tomato Relish

Grind and drain:
13 cucumbers
6 onions
20 large green tomatoes
2 green peppers
2 red peppers (or green or yellow...)

Add:
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp ground cloves
8 cups sugar
4 cups vinegar

Boil 1 hour

Make a paste:
4 Tbs flour
2 Tbs dry mustard
2 Tbs turmeric

Add paste and stir until thick.  Can pints in water bath for 10 minutes (4500 ft elev).  16 minutes above 7000 ft.

It's getting cold outside!

Happy Halloween!  We're a bit behind in the holiday department.  Finally got most of the pumpkins carved this weekend and roasted the seeds last night.  Of course I left the costume preparation until the last minute and was up late last night altering the vampire cape so it wouldn't drag on the ground.  The witch hat disappeared for a while, but was found again, in the closet of all places.   

Almost a year ago, we wandered through a store and found costumes for almost nothing and thought we were so clever for buying next years costumes when they were cheap. I managed to out-smart myself in all of this however. We purchased a cute little duck costume for the little one, but I had to put it away because the big kids kept trying to squeeze into it.  Now, it's Halloween and I can't seem to remember where I put it away exactly.  Aren't I clever?  Wherever it is, it's safe. 

We enjoyed a very nice October, but the nights have gotten very cold.  I harvested everything I could out of the garden and cleaned it all up.  It felt good to finally get some order to the jungle and be done for the winter.  I had planned on putting in a fall garden, but I just never got to it. 

Growing up, we always had a snow storm on Halloween, but it doesn't look like we'll get a storm tonight.  Hope you have a happy, warm and safe Halloween!

The October Garden Update

This is the first year that I have still had a garden in October.  Honestly, I've never had a garden survive past August due to early frosts in the mountains, but living in a warmer climate has changed things for me.  While the plants are still alive, things are pretty much finished.  I harvested all the tomatoes that were attempting to turn red this morning and this is what I got.

The North box looks pretty sad since the buttercup squash attacked the tomato trellis and then fell down, pulling most of the tomatoes with it.  There are still many green tomatoes on the plants and I have plans for them, but they will have to wait until I have all my equipment, or until I'm planning a trip back to the ranch. 

I found one more lemon cucumber on the vine, almost ready and a final one ball squash, also nearly ready to be picked.  From three sweet pepper plants I will get a total of three peppers.  One nearly made it to red before my little garden helper proudly picked it for me.  (sigh)  Another is a deep purple color, trying to make it to red and the last is a stubborn green.  I probably won't plant peppers again. It was an impulse buy at the farmer's market anyway.  We just don't use them much and I don't care for the after-taste of green peppers especially.

As soon as I get all those green tomatoes taken care of and the last of the other plants are finished, I'm looking forward to pulling everything out and finally seeing some order in the garden, even if it's just plain dirt.  I may even find another onion under there.  The jungle of tomato and squash plants is looking old and tired and I think it's almost time to put everything to bed.  I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to try to get some spinach out of there before winter hits. 

Make your own garden fresh salsa!

Here's another drive-by posting!  I keep thinking that things will slow down a bit now that school has been going for a few weeks and my design jobs have finished up, but things still feel crazy around here.

The weather has cooled quite a bit, but the tomatoes are still producing wonderfully.  It is so fun to actually get a harvest from tomato plants.  In the mountains of Wyoming, I would just be getting a few red tomatoes when it would frost and kill everything.  It seems like we would always get a hard frost in August sometime and then another around Labor Day.  In between, we would still have nice summery weather, but squash and tomatoes don't forgive you for a hard frost.

So here I am, getting buried in those wonderful tomatoes and I keep telling myself that I should put together a batch of spaghetti sauce, since we eat a lot of spaghetti and pizza during the year.  But I just can't seem to collect enough tomatoes to make a big enough batch to make the canning effort worthwhile.

Why, you ask?  Because I love fresh salsa!  Every time the counter starts to be overwhelmed with tomatoes, I get a craving for salsa.  I whip up a big batch of the stuff, and then realize that I don't have any corn chips, or that my cilantro is all mushy, so I have made several extra bike trips to the store in my salsa making adventures.  Then I end up eating most of the batch while trying to get the flavors just right, so I have to start over again in order to have some salsa to share with the husband.  There have been many days that I have only had salsa for lunch.  I was hoping to start a new diet trend, but alas, I haven't dropped any inches on my salsa diet.

In case anyone out there is wanting some fresh garden salsa, but isn't quite sure how to get started, let me share my formula with you.  It's not really a recipe because I don't have a single measurement to give you.  Here's what I've got:

Fresh Garden Salsa
-Chop up lots of tomatoes.  Till your bowl is about half to 3/4 full. 
-Chop up the onions.  I like a lot of onion, but you can take it easy here.
-Chop up some cilantro.  I love cilantro, but if you go too crazy here it makes things a bit bitter, so I just do enough that you see a bit of green in every scoop.
-Add some salt and then add some more.
-Pour in a few splashes of lemon or lime juice.  I prefer lemon for some reason.
-Stir and scoop some out on a chip to taste.
-Add salt and lemon as needed to reach your favorite taste.
-Add more tomatoes, onion and cilantro if you taste test too much.
-Eat and repeat.

I guess I'll have to find a farmer before I can any sauce.  I'm not sure how much longer these tomatoes will keep coming.

Thoughts on boys and dogs

I'm tired today.  My silly husband forgot that he had lots of paperwork to do and went fishing yesterday afternoon.  Late last night, his memory caught up to him and we stayed up very late getting it done.  Very late.  I remember staying up that late without any bad side effects when I was in college.  I guess I'm getting old because I'm stumbling around today in a sleepy haze.  But my grogginess isn't what I want to talk about today.  I want to talk about dogs and boys. 

Those who live in a fairly clean environment may not realize that dogs like to be dirty.  They like to be smelly.  In fact, if they find something particularly disgusting on the ground, they will roll in it until they are completely covered in the nasty stuff.  An environment like a cattle ranch provides ample substances for every dogs pleasure.  We're used to it and our dogs don't come inside much anyway. 

My city cousins on the other hand, were not pleased when their pretty, shiny coated, ride in the car with them dog went straight to a fresh pile of horse manure and adorned herself.  She came up looking like a green zebra and her people were not pleased.  I found it hilarious to watch the city dog, feeling so proud of herself, suddenly become an outcast.  Here she had put on the best perfume she could find and they were unappreciative.  Cruel, even, kicking her out of the tent.  Refusing to pet her.  Pushing her away when she tried to climb into their laps.  She refused to be discouraged though and she re-applied the lovely stuff several times during the family reunion.  I wonder how the 10 hour drive back to civilization was?

Perhaps it is the tired haze I'm in, but suddenly today, as I walk into the disgusting place that is my son's bedroom and hear him whine about having to shower or brush his teeth or wash his hands or do anything that could count as clean, I suddenly had the picture of that dog pop into my head.  Not only does my six year old boy enjoy being filthy, I think he would like to roll in it.  It can't just be my fault because my other kids will actually brush their teeth, with toothpaste on the brush.  It just seems to be the little boy factor going on here.  I really hope that this is a passing phase because if it stays like this for the next 12 years, he just may end up living in the doghouse.

My late August garden update

Okay, so it's a week later than promised.  The school thing has thrown me for a loop.  Plus the job thing takes time.  Plus, I ran out of planner pages and I'm just floating from task to task, not really knowing if I'm getting the important stuff done or not. 

What was a jungle of green has kind of cleared out a bit.  The landlady cut back the sprinklers a lot and I didn't notice for a while, so I've had a few issues from that.  The buttercup squash vine that attacked the tomato trellis suddenly got too heavy and yanked a bunch of tomatoes down, so things don't look very orderly right now.  In fact it looks pretty messy. 

All of the squash plants have come down with a case of powdery mildew, so after this picture was taken, I went a little crazy pruning out the affected leaves.  In thanks, the zucchini plant spit out four more squashes.  I thought it had given up, but here it comes again!  Hopefully, the plants can get a little more air circulation in there now.  The neighbor lady said that all of her squash got it too and then she shared some of her pear tomatoes with me.

The tomatoes just keep coming, and I love it.  It's kind of funny to have so many, since I'm really the only tomato lover in the house.  My husband did help me clean up two big bowls of fresh salsa though.  I forgot to buy more corn chips at the store, or I would probably be having salsa for lunch again today.

The regular cucumbers have been a disappointment.  Two strangely shaped cukes is all I got from those two plants.  I have harvested several lemon cucumbers and those plants seem to be making some more.  The beans are done.  They won't forgive my not noticing the water situation, but a neighbor says that she has some for me.

My counter is covered with tomatoes and I have a few summer squash sitting in the fridge, waiting for me to get more inspiration on how to prepare them.  And that's my August garden update.  I'm waiting for the weather to cool a bit so I can try again for peas and spinach in the fall.  I love how this hot weather makes those tomatoes turn red, but I'm about ready for some crisp days to come along.

End of Summer Cramming

Phew!  We've been busy, busy!  Mostly traveling, but I also started a new job doing graphic design.  It's a nice, stay at home type job, but I am out of practice.  It's kind of like stretching a muscle you haven't used in a while, so that has been taking up lots of time.  Actually, I should be working right now, since the kiddos are asleep and the husband is doing husband things, but my brain seems to have reached capacity for today.  I realized as I was cleaning out the fridge and dumping out moldy, forgotten food, that I must be avoiding my work if I was actually cleaning out the fridge.  I never clean out the fridge if I can help it.

So, I figured I'd take advantage of my shirking of work to post a quick thought here on my blog.  I have been trying to check in with the blogs on my reading list, but I know I've missed some good stuff.  I was all set to post a garden update, but then I lost the camera for about a week.  I found it again, at my mom's house, so hopefully tomorrow I'll share some pictures of what's going on there.  Or maybe it will be the next day after that.  I'm hoping to cram one more activity in tomorrow before school officially starts.

Fishing

About two weeks ago, we suddenly realized that school was upon us and we hadn't accomplished a fraction of the things on our list that we wanted to do this summer.  I hate how school abruptly ends summer like that.  Can I homeschool my kids until October and then send them to public school?  I'm not ready to be tied down like this.  There's still so much nice weather ahead.  Trails to be hiked, marshmallows to roast, creeks to swim in, fish to catch!  It's a panicky feeling knowing that the freedom of summer is nearly over.

Anyway, we tried to cram as much in as we could.  We've been fishing and hiking and camping and museum exploring and grandma visiting and I think some fun memories have been made.  We did discover that the baby is not yet responsible enough to sleep in a sleeping bag, or anywhere else that allows too much freedom of movement.  We did not sleep well because she did not sleep well... that and we forgot any padding to sleep on.  I am amazed at how uncomfortable the ground is now that I'm past 30.  I used to camp all the time as a younger person.  We would sleep right on the ground without a tent.  I don't remember ever being uncomfortable.  I am  now joining the -camping with an air mattress- club.  My 16-year-old self is ashamed, but my back insists.

Aerospace Museum

Tomorrow, I hope to go for one last hiking/fishing expedition before I admit defeat and surrender to the inevitable start of school on Thursday.  Who starts on Thursday anyway?  Who starts before Labor Day, for that matter?  Obviously, nobody asked my opinion on this matter.