Tomato bounty

So... for all my whining about my never-ripening tomatoes, we ended up getting a lot of bang for our buck. If you remember, we bought six (eight?) seedlings and also tried starting some from seed then got a bunch of seedlings from a friend, which resulted in a tomato forest in our garden. However, the weather this year was a bit weird and most people in the area had to wait a long time for any ripe fruit.

I got a bunch of yellow cherry-sized tomatoes off our plants and a few larger tomatoes that, once inside, eventually turned orange-red. However, last week, when the forecast threatened frost, I pulled all the remaining plants and harvested a HUGE mountain of mostly green tomatoes. We also got a couple of pounds of ripe tomatoes from the same friend who gave us the seedlings.

I found a quick-and-dirty recipe for pickled green tomatoes from Martha Stewart of all people -- basically just dunk them in leftover pickle brine for a week. I did that with about a cup of sliced tomatoes but then I went looking for other recipes. I finally decided to wing it after looking at oodles of recipes. I made two quarts last week and another three quarts today. I sure hope they taste OK... ;)

I put aside a few of the nicest tomatoes that remained then the rest went into a tri-colour tomato sauce -- I didn't measure at all and it came out a full quart.

So, we have two pounds of green tomatoes waiting to ripen in paper bags and about a pound of ripe fruit. Truthfully, I'm almost as tired of tomatoes as I am of cucumbers but I am still thankful for the bounty that my garden provided in the end.

Making Plum Jam

After picking so many plums yesterday, I searched around for some basic recipes -- I found the perfect one at astray recipes, Italian Plum Preserves. Ten cups of chopped plums made almost 2 1/2 litres of jam. And it's really darn yummy, too.