So I've been busy.. thus the reason for no recent posts. A good friend of mine with a garden I long for, dropped off 15 lbs of green tomoatoes on the Friday before I was to have a dinner party. Of course, I had told her, "Any extra produce you grow, bring to me and I will can it." Did I understand the request? Obviously not. In addition to those lovely green tomatoes she also provided about 1 lb or so of bell peppers. So what was I to do? After the dinner party was done (will talk about it another time), I got to canning. We went out Sunday afternoon for my afterparty lunch (fast food) and to run errands. As part of this we bought quart sized jars and some jalapenos... the only two things I was missing to make this canning party complete.
With that.. it began. I "dill pickeled" 6 quarts of green tomatoes. Of course, as usual I forgot all about my Joy of Cooking as a resources for such things. So after searching the internet for an hour looking for the "right" recipes (read: my husband doesn't want cinnamon or cloves in his pickled vegetables), I finally remembered the good old Joy, and she provided us a base dill pickling recipe.
What's most interesting to me about canned green tomatoes is not the flavor or the time to do it, but how they look in the jar. I think they are quite beautiful. For me, that is part of any of it... what the final product looks like...the beautiful colors, a bit of fruit or vegtable and sugar or vinegar can make.
After the world of dill pickled tomatoes I moved on to jalapeno jelly and the use of those green bells. Now in hindsight I should have done all of this in the opposite order. Finishing the evenng close to bedtime with jalapeno jelly lingering in the air does not make for good dreams.
