In article says...
Fried green tomatoes is right nice! Also...
Canning is great for tomatoes, make salsa, or V-8 juice, or tomato juice, or
even better here is a link to a wine recipe that won two first place ribbons
in competitions. They are too good to waste!
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques14.asp

What an interesting recipe. I might try this! I hope I don't go blind
if I don't make it right. :-)

To everyone: Thanks for all the good advice, I'm going to try some
different things from all the advice. For some reason everyone seemed to
have a bumper crop of tomatoes this season in Chicago. My parents
already almost filled my freezers with their crop so not only do I have
too many, I'm importing from their crop as well!

Here's a funny article about the tomato situation written by the Chicago
Sun Times columnist Mark Brown:

http://www.suntimes.com/output/brown...s-brown27.html

writes:

When you open yourself to preserving food, you open the door to flavors
you
never knew existed ... good flavors that make no apologies.

Yup. Kinda like having your own chickens and eating real eggs. :-)

Glenna
who forgot what real eggs tasted like until last September when the ladies
came to live here

writes:

Hi there, Have you thought of maybe canning your tomatoes? It is
really easy. You can add onions, bell peppers and garlic to the
tomatoes then can them also. If not, you could always send them to
me!

Question of safety here. When you add the bell peppers, don't they then
have to be pressure canned?

Curious.

Glenna

In article, says...
writes:


Or indeed,like eating real chickens !!!.....i agree with you entirely.
kelvyn

On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 20:37:39 -0700, (Glenna
Rose) wrote:

writes:

Hi there, Have you thought of maybe canning your tomatoes? It is
really easy. You can add onions, bell peppers and garlic to the
tomatoes then can them also. If not, you could always send them to
me!

Question of safety here. When you add the bell peppers, don't they then
have to be pressure canned?


Yes, they do.

Pat

Mark Anderson wrote:

I've been harvesting tomatoes for a couple of weeks now. I tried to keep
up and eat as much as I can and also give away a lot but the tomatoes
keep coming and coming every day. Now the thought of eating another
tomato turns my stomach.

I got a terrific rash one summer from too many tomatoes. :-)

One of the processes of nature that seems ill-conceived is that all
those lovely tomatoes come ripe at *just* the season one doesn't want
to be boiling and simmering and processing. Much nicer to have a
bucket of 'garden fresh' tomatoes in December when one could really
enjoy a warm kitchen with fragrant pasta sauce simmering on the stove.

Does anyone have good tips on freezing these? My parent's put them in
boiling water for a couple of minutes and then peel the skins, smash them
up, and put them in ziplock bags to freeze. That seemed a little too
much work for me so I just cut them up, put them in a blender, liquefied
them, and put them in ziplock bags. Since my liquefied tomatoes
contained skins I'm not sure how this is going to taste when I thaw them

And blenderized seeds? Ick.

It may be a bit more trouble, but if you simply chunk up the tomatoes,
cook them a bit to soften, and put through a food mill, seeds and
skins will be left behind, and you'll have a sort of tomato puree base
to freeze. I picked this up from a Jacques Pepin show. The cooking was
*very* brief -- 5 minutes or so in a large shallow pan. I believe he
first sauted some onions and garlic in a little olive oil before
throwing the tomato chunks in. If you're thinking of a chile base,
this would be a good addition. When it's chile time, thaw, and cook to
reduce, or not.

The point is that this method filters out seeds and skin fairly easily
(I *have* done it, and it works), and doesn't take a day's labor doing
that 'peel, (de-) seed, chop' thing.

Glenna Rose wrote:

writes:

Hi there, Have you thought of maybe canning your tomatoes? It is
really easy. You can add onions, bell peppers and garlic to the
tomatoes then can them also. If not, you could always send them to
me!

Question of safety here. When you add the bell peppers, don't they then
have to be pressure canned?

Curious.

Glenna

It would seem to depend on the quantity added. If just a tablespoon or so
for seasoning, I wouldn't think so. I base that on the observation that
such like can be canned up in tomato juice and the amount of added acid is
not increased in the 'official' recipes. I suspect that the two tablespoons
of lemon juice per qt advice actually errs on the side of too much acid to
avoid errors on the side of too little.

Moreover, both the garlic and the onions contribute antibacterial qualities
when fresh. I don't know if they are destroyed by heat or not but even if
they are, they are fresh when added to the puree and would help disinfect
it chemically before the heat disinfection of boiling took over.

Bill
--
Zone 8b (Detroit, MI)
I do not post my address to news groups.