What to do with green tomatoes

This year, I constructed a raised bed garden, and it produced wonderful vegetables, including about 50 pounds of tomatoes.

However, as is typical in the Pacific Northwest, most of the tomatoes didn’t ripen.

The first tomatoes I ripened in my kitchen and ate them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner sliced as a side vegetable. They weren’t as tasty as vine-ripened garden tomatoes. The tomatoes tasted like the ones you buy in the store.

In mid-October, I picked all the tomatoes because it was cold and rainy here. They weren’t growing anymore, and I was worried they’d freeze.

After the next five pounds ripened, I made a big pot of spaghetti sauce and added the tomatoes. It worked well. The sauce I made was great, and the added tomatoes from my garden didn’t detract from the sauce.

The following five pounds I added to Chicken Vegetable Soup. These tomatoes weren’t as ripe as the previous batch. I often have turnips or parsnips in my homemade soups, but this time I had on hand carrots, Swiss chard, and zucchini. The soup tasted weak, but I added salt and it was fine.

I have a huge pot of soup, and it’s lasting for days.

Since it’s mid-November and I still have green tomatoes, I decided to look up some recipes for how to use them.

I tried Brenda Hyde’s Broiled Tomatoes from the Old-Fashioned Living Web site. You cut tomatoes in half, put them on a baking sheet, add a toping of cracker crumbs, spices, and oil, then broil.

The Broiled Tomatoes were tasty.

Than I decided I’d try Fried Green Tomatoes. I’ve heard so much about them I was curious. I even bought bacon because Mary Lucile Jordan, county extension coordinator with the Etowah County office of the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, said if you want that real “Southern” flavor, fry in bacon grease.

The Fried Green Tomatoes weren’t as good as the Broiled Tomatoes.

A couple of weeks ago, Lynne Rossetto Kasper, host of the radio program The Splendid Table which airs on National Public Radio, raved about green tomatoes and made them sound luscious. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the recipe she talked about on her site.

I’ll do further checking to see if I can find it.

Be sure to allow plenty of circulation around your green tomatoes as you wait for them to ripen. I put some of mine in two flat boxes with newspapers on top. However, I put one box on the top of the other. The tomatoes in the bottom box developed mildew, and I had to throw them away.

Here are more resources for using green tomatoes:

“We Love Green Tomatoes” – OregonLive.com

“What to Do With Green Tomatoes” – domesticsluttery

“Too Many Tomatoes?” – Farmgirl Fare