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Post by heavyhitterokra on Oct 16, 2022 20:08:30 GMT -6
Since drought and grasshoppers nearly wiped out my tomato patch this year and since the August rains and temporarily cooler temperatures caused my vines to rejuvenate and blossom a second time, I've got quite a few larger-than-fist-size, green tomatoes that I will have to pick tomorrow or else lose them to freezing.
I'll probably fry some of them and maybe set a few back to ripen in a cool, dark place, but does anyone have any other uses they can think of for unripened, green tomatoes?
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Post by chrysanthemum on Oct 17, 2022 6:10:49 GMT -6
I remember years ago making a green tomato spice cake that I found pretty good. I don’t know what recipe I used, but there are a bunch online, so you could choose one that sounds promising. I just did a quick search and came up with a post that offers twenty uses for green tomatoes. I’m really not sure about some of what they say (they suggest that salsa verde in a Mexican restaurant is made from green tomatoes, but I think tomatillos are the real ingredient), but I thought there might be something in the list that catches your eye. It could be a good experiment to try a batch of green tomato ketchup or a a green tomato pie. insanelygoodrecipes.com/green-tomato-recipes/
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Post by hmoosek on Oct 17, 2022 7:11:53 GMT -6
I had that problem a few years ago. I was told to wrap them in newspaper and put in a cool area. It worked for a few, but a bunch rotted. Of course, who’s seen a newspaper lately.
Halloween is coming. Put one in each kids pail. Of course that could backfire on ya. Hahahahaaa!
I don’t know many dishes except frying. I wonder how green tomato jelly would taste? Probably not too good.
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Post by amyinowasso on Oct 17, 2022 10:49:06 GMT -6
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Oct 17, 2022 12:26:46 GMT -6
Thanks, for all the quick replies and the great suggestions, those were all wonderful ideas. I got a good chuckle out of hmoosek's Halloween trick-or-treat suggestion. That one still brings a smile.
I've made green tomato relish and I've pickled them too, but neither one was really anything I enjoyed eating.
I've never tried curry that I know of. I lost my sense of smell and my sense of taste back in 2013, so pretty much everything I eat nowadays has the aromatic allure of unseasoned chalk dust. I was just hoping to create a new thread here that might help you guys find new ways of using your own green tomatoes. I hate seeing things go to waste.
A good friend of mine used a few green tomatoes, along with some of my sweet peppers, some onion, a little fresh garlic, an ear or two of corn, and a few jalapenos to fry with garden grown potatoes. After she fried them crispy brown on the edges, she roasted them in a large aluminum foil pan, inside her charcoal grill. Man, was that ever good eating! I think, even though I can't taste much of anything, a lot of the pleasure of eating is in the effort taken by someone to make things special like that.
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Post by amyinowasso on Oct 17, 2022 13:09:43 GMT -6
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Post by woodeye on Oct 17, 2022 13:10:04 GMT -6
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Oct 17, 2022 14:58:11 GMT -6
That green tomato tabbouleh sounded really good. That is another idea that I never would have thought of on my own; sort of like I'd never have imagined that green tomatoes and fried potatoes would go together so well. I sure never would have thought up that oven-roasted green tomato casserole dish recipe, or of frying them to put on burgers! Wow! That curry tomato soup looked delicious! Green tomato stew, roasted green tomato soup, green tomato pasta sauce, green tomato salad, green tomato gazpacho, green tomato chili, green tomato chutney, green tomato pizza, green tomato casserole with cheese, green tomato BLT, fried green tomato tart, green tomato pie, green tomato cake, green tomato bread, green tomato salsa!
Wow! You guys really came through on that one!
It's amazing what other people's brains can dream up sometimes. Thank you, all for so many exquisite ideas!
I ended up with 47 pounds of green tomatoes and 5 pounds of ripe ones by this evening.
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Post by woodeye on Oct 17, 2022 20:14:05 GMT -6
OH man, now the pains of not having Green Tomato Tabbouleh on hand are coming faster! Awesome photo, have fun with your Green Tomato creativity...
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Post by chrysanthemum on Oct 17, 2022 20:28:25 GMT -6
A lot of those green tomatoes do look like they have the potential to mature. I’m thinking in particular of the larger, lighter ones. A couple of years ago, I picked a bunch of green tomatoes in November, I think, and almost all of them did ripen inside. I just put them in a single layer in a shallow cardboard box on a shelf in my pantry. I had one box for tomatoes and another for peppers, and most of them did turn, but it took some time. I liked having them visible to me so that I could see if any started to rot and needed to be removed. I actually don’t remember any rotting, though some of the peppers shriveled instead of ripening.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Oct 17, 2022 21:02:34 GMT -6
I wish you guys didn't live so far away, I'd load you up with green tomato fodder for a week's worth of cooking and salad creations. That would make my day to share those with someone.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Oct 18, 2022 21:20:47 GMT -6
I hope you can find someone closer by who will help you make good use of all of those tomatoes. My mother in Virginia is expecting a freeze tonight, so she’s been getting ready, too, harvesting lots of things. She had some green tomatoes that she figured were too immature to pick, and I think she’s wanting more ripe ones. She apparently pulled up three plants today that she wanted to save and put them on her sun porch in a bucket of water for right now. The porch isn’t heated, but it won’t go below freezing unless there’s some really extended deep cold. This is the picture she sent out in her daily e-mail.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Oct 19, 2022 15:37:28 GMT -6
Nice!
It never would have crossed my mind to do that, but I'll bet it will work.
I found some Fall volunteer tomatoes once when I was a kid. I couldn't stand the thought of them dying from cold weather, so I dug them up and put them in 5-gallon buckets and brought them inside for the winter. Unfortunately, our house did not have any South-facing windows, so the vines grew spindly from lack of light. They bloomed later, but with no insects to pollinate them, they never set fruit. I gave up on them before Spring, but I'll bet they would have made it another season in the garden if I had known about pruning and hadn't stopped taking car of them by the end of January.
My poor tomato plants still had blooms on them this year when the freeze wiped them out yesterday morning.
It dropped to 21° by 7:00 am here this morning. While visiting friends today in Tahlequah, I saw that even the plants they had covered and setting on the front porch froze and were killed last night.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Oct 19, 2022 16:52:50 GMT -6
I’m really not sure how long she intends to keep these going. I’ll have to ask her what she’s planning to do. Play it by ear would be my guess. I’ll try to report back.
21 degrees. That’s cold! I’m not surprised that even protected plants died at those temperatures, especially given that it was such a sudden and significant drop.
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Post by hmoosek on Oct 19, 2022 17:52:58 GMT -6
Oh boy, that was a hard freeze! heavyhitterokraWe dipped to 37 and I shivered everytime my pup wanted a potty break. She’s getting older, so she has to go out more often. I may have to get a winter suit just for potty breaks.
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