I grew 1 pear tomato plant last year, and it took off like a weed.
I was so excited to see this plant in my local nursery, since I remember loving them in my child hood. I bought it and planted it, and by the end of July last year it had grown into a monster. Seriously.
It was like 20 feet across and killing everything else in my garden. I didn't have the stones to prune it back or dug it up. The only adversary it had were the cucumbers that were doing the same thing to the rest of my garden. It was like Mothra vs. Godzilla out there.
This year, because of my silliness I bought some seeds and planted more then one. Then the volunteers started showing up (Close to 40). I did pull most, but didn't have the heart to pull all of them. That weakness left me with yellow pear tomatoes in strange places in the garden, and about a million more tomatoes then I can eat/
This left me with a surplus of tomatoes, ripe and green. What to do with them? I hate to see food wasted, especially my organic homegrown produce.
Well a wee bit o' research brought me three great ideas!
1:Dry them
Make oven "sun" dried tomatoes. If you have a solar dehydrator (Or are planing to make one like I am) use that. If you do not, (I haven't quite gotten around to making it yet... ) use the oven! I sprayed a tensy tiny bit of olive oil on a pan, sliced the tomatoes and threw them on there mixed with a bit of salt.
I heated the oven to the lowest temp it would go. I let them sit in the oven for about 20 mins, then turned the oven off. Then 20 mins later I came and turned it back on. And repeated until they looked nice and dry. Since this way of drying isn't perfect, I would recommend storing in the freezer(They don't take up much space). But that way they have an intense delicious flavor and are ready for you to grab a few and add to anything!
2:Can them
I made pickled green tomatoes. When I tore down the unwanted plants, I had a TON of green tomatoes to deal with. I sliced them in half (time consuming, but easy and hopefully worth it) and pickled them 3 ways.
Every recipe I could find called for sugar. I never have been a fan of many sweet savory things like bread and butter pickles, so I improvised. Usually I would NOT recommend messing with a recipe for canning, since often the ingredients are part of the preservative. However, I know tomatoes are pretty acidic, and I have some canning experience, AND I processed them extra time, just to be safe.
I pickled them in my regular vinegar/water/pickling salt concoction with sliced onions and a few garlic cloves (also from the garden :)
I made another batch same as above but with jalapenos (I love spicy stuff).
Then I made a batch with the recipe I kept finding that included brown sugar, onions, vinegar, cinnamon and allspice. Sounds weird to me (It looks kinda weird too) but I have had a bit of some my MIL made and it was decent. Like a sweet relish. Anyway, HH will probably eat it. Probably.....
3: Freeze them
I read that you can freeze clean whole cherry tomatoes. When you are ready to cook with them, just pull them out of the freezer and stick the bag in a little water, or run the tomato under water for a second and the peel will just slide right off! I am usually too lazy to peal tomatoes, especially if they are tiny. But if it just comes right off then awesome! I can't back this up with personal experience yet, however I will let you know for sure soon. Then toss them in whatever you are cooking and voila! I bet you could make a sauce with them too.
4:Fermenting them
I have not included this really since its more of an experiment. I love my naturally fermented kraut so why not give green tomato fermented pickles a shot? I had a free crock. And I was out of sanitized jars for canning ;) I layered in my tomatoes with the onion slices, a few sliced cucumbers and salt in the crock. I pressed them down and left them alone for a while. Eventually a brine was drawn out of the tomatoes, enough to cover the tops of them. I used a salt solution inside 2 ziploc bags (the salt solution is in case they both rip the brine won't be ruined) to press everything down and keep the tomatoes submerged. In about a month I'll let you know if they turn out!
Oh yeah, don't forget to save some seeds form the ripest prettiest tomatoes you get. Just squeeze the seeds into a jar, including the liquid. Allow to ferment for a few days (It looks a little gross, so be sure to let anyone else who might do dish know it is supposed to be that way so your seeds don't get tossed) then rinse and dry. Then store for next year, don't forget to write the type of plant it is on the package somewhere.
That way you have plenty of seeds so you can go through this mess again next year! Hehe...
The weather over here in the uk hasn't been too great, so we haven't got much of a veg crop, we do have a load of tomatoes, which I've been growing in the green house, and we should also get a lot of potatoes.
ReplyDeleteWhat we're waiting for the most is the fruits, we pick blackberries and apples and plums every year, mainly for jamming and making wine, but they aren't ripe at the moment, so jam making sessions will be late this year.
Did you know you can also make wine from tomatoes ? I've never tried vegetable wines (usually make fruit wines) but it's basically the same method.