Green Tomato Catsup

This week the Milkweed Diaries is brought to you by green tomatoes.

I emerged from three months of intense off-farm work and found myself facing an onslaught of green tomatoes. They are everywhere I look. I realize that a normal person would chuck them, but I have an obsessive drive to use as much of the food that comes out of our gardens as possible.

So here's one of the things I did with them:

Green Tomato Catsup

This recipe is adapted from the classic Rodale publication, Stocking Up, the 1977 edition of which I have a beloved, battered, hardcover copy.

• 6 pounds green tomatoes
• 3 pounds onions
• 1 Tbs black pepper
• 1 Tbs dry mustard powder
• 1 1/2 Tbs high-quality salt
• 1 quart apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup honey

1. Slice tomatoes and onions and combine in a pot with everything except the honey.
2. Pour vinegar over the vegetables and cook for 4 hours over low heat, stirring occasionally.
3. Put mixture through a sieve or food mill.
4. Return to the pot and bring to a boil again, allow to boil until catsup has achieved desired thickness.
5. Add honey.
6. Pour into hot, sterilized jars and seal at once.
7. Process in a hot water bath for 5 minutes.

Before cooking....

...the amazing food mill that my friend LJ found at Goodwill, and all that was left of the cooked tomatoes and onions after milling....

...and the final product: catsup!

Green Tomato Ginger Marmalade

In my ongoing quest to not waste food from the garden, I have been processing my way through pounds and pounds of green tomatoes picked before the first hard frost. I've been chopping and cooking and canning up a storm over the past week, and suffice to say that if you receive a holiday gift from me this year, it will probably involve green tomatoes.

My first experiment was a couple of huge pots of green tomato apple chutney yielding 38 half pint jars of sweet-sour chutney deliciousness. Next up: marmalade. Marmalade?! Yes, marmalade. In the search for creative green tomato uses, I came across this one and had to try it. And it turns out it's amazing.

This recipe is modified from one I found in Marilyn Kluger's classic food-preservation reference and recipe book, "Preserving Summer's Bounty", which is an indispensable resource in my kitchen. I added the ginger and some notes about how to process the lemons.

Green Tomato Ginger Marmalade

• 6 pounds unpeeled green tomatoes
• 6 lemons
• 1 cup water
• 6 cups honey
• A generous handful of coarsely chopped crystalized (candied) ginger
• 1 tsp powdered ginger

1. Wash and chop the tomatoes. I used a food processor.
2. Slice 6 lemons into thin slices, removing seeds and retaining as much of the peel as you want, depending on how bitter you like your marmalade
3. Boil the lemons in the 1 cup water. Strain off any unwanted peels and seeds that you may have missed and keep the water, lemon pulp, and as many ribbons of peel as you want to retain (they're beautiful floating in the finished product)
4. Stir the lemony water, honey, tomatoes, and powdered ginger together. Cook slowly, stirring constantly until the mixture is thick and clear. This takes a long time. I kept the marmalade on a low simmer for several hours, stirring every so often, and it reduced considerably and became more and more marmalade-like as it cooked.
5. Add the candied ginger and cook for a few more minutes.
6. Pour hot marmalade into jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space, adjust lids, and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.

What an unexpected and fabulous coping strategy for green tomato overload. So good I could eat it with a spoon (and have). The perfectly melded flavors of honey, lemon peel, and tart green tomatoes are a delight, and the ginger gives it an extra snap.

I still have five bushel baskets full of green tomatoes to process, even with all of the marmalade jarred up and cooling on the counter and enough chutney for years to come. So, dear reader, expect more green tomato recipes coming up!

Green Tomato Chutney

The question of what to do with green tomatoes at the end of the season used to be so simple when my garden was smaller. Fried green tomatoes are a delicious fall treat that I've come to associate with the first frost, when all of the tomatoes have to be harvested and brought inside whether they're ripe or not. Tart and sweet, crispy and juicy, fried green tomatoes are delightful sign that cold weather is setting in. But no matter how many mouths you have to feed, you can only consume so many fried green tomatoes.

This year, we grew more than twenty varieties of tomatoes, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 tomato plants in a 40-foot hoophouse and scattered around the ever-growing garden. We sold hundreds of pounds of tomatoes at farmers markets and I canned gallons and gallons of whole tomatoes and tomato sauce, made and froze scads of salsa, preserved boatloads of cherry tomatoes in oil, and generally sacked away enough homemade tomato products to last for a long time to come.

Tomato fatigue set in a while ago, and with the chaotic schedule of my job running a political campaign this fall, the last thing I wanted to think about was processing more tomatoes. But there they were: dozens and dozens of them. Piles of them. Bushels of them.

Fortunately, my friend Penryn sent me her recipe for Green Tomato Chutney, which turned out to be extraordinary. I canned a batch this afternoon, and saved some for eating right away, since it is pretty much irresistible: sweet, tart, saucy, and divinely delicious.

Penryn's Green Tomato Chutney

• 3 C currants or raisins (or cranberries or a mix)*
• 2 lemons that you have peeled, seeded, quartered and sliced thinly**
• 4 1/2 C finely chopped tart apples
• 4 1/2 C finely chopped green tomatoes
• 2 cloves garlic***
• 1/2 C honey
• 2 C finely chopped onions
• 1 C vinegar****
• 1 C filtered water
• 2 T mustard seed
• 2 tsp ground ginger (or slightly more fresh grated ginger)*****
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper or 1 chopped fresh, ripe red cayenne pepper
• 2 tsp cinnamon

Combine all ingredients except honey and simmer until they are soft (probably 30 min or so). Add honey. Pack into hot, sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Process for 10 minutes in boiling water bath. Makes about 6 pints.

Notes:

*I used a scant 2 cups, which was certainly enough

**I substituted lemon juice

***I almost always at least double the garlic in recipes! I used 5 cloves put through a press

****I recommend organic apple cider vinegar

I used a food processor, which worked quite well for all the finely chopping.

The final product was super-delicious. Unfortunately, the chutney only made a small dent in my green tomato glut--I canned 38 half-pint jars, and would have to make another half-dozen batches to see the light at the end of the tomato processing tunnel. Tune in tomorrow for further adventures in green tomato usage.

PS: Apologies for the long absence from the Milkweed Diaries...I was caught up in the biennial whirlwind of running my friend Susan's campaign for North Carolina House. She won. And I am glad to be back in the kitchen, and writing again!

Gathering Around the Table

Heirloom winter squash stuffed with walnut-fig-goat cheese quinoa and served with fresh figs, elder- berries, and chevre.

To me, the kitchen table is the hearth, the center of the home, an altar, a canvass, and a hub of family and community.

This summer we've been hosting weekly "family dinners," gathering around a big, long table and sharing food, drink, and stories from the farm. I have loved these dinners--of course for the flavors of the foods coming out of the garden, but also for the sense of community that is created when friends and family come together over food. Sharing food seems to be one of the oldest, most universal ways that we connect with each other.

This time of year it is so easy to fill the table with beautiful and delicious foods from the farm and garden--it's the height of harvest season and we are eating well.

And many friends with gardens have reached that point that gardeners know so well when the volume of food coming out of the garden has become more than the gardener can handle and s/he has to issue a call for help in dealing with the onslaught of produce.

Sharon put out such a call because her fig tree was laden down with fruit, and Puma couldn't keep up with the elderberries in his front yard. So in between meetings and office time at work this week, I slipped over to my friends' yards in my and harvested the surplus fruit. Deep in the foliage of the fig tree in Sharon's back yard, reaching for the higher branches, wearing my professional attire, and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, I thought about how grateful I am for the gift economy in my community, and for the shared appreciation of good, fresh food.

Last week, we invited friends who have worked on the farm over the course of this growing season to come out for family dinner and celebrate the harvest--including figs and elderberries, along with the annual vegetables pouring out of our garden right now.

Trading with other vendors at the farmers markets has brought even more amazing food on to our table -- artisan cheeses and breads that are a perfect complement to the fruit and vegetables.

All-local bruschetta with homegrown tomatoes, beet green and basil pesto, local bread, and local goat cheese ... by Christopher

Friends bring their own delightful concoctions full of fresh local goodness to the table, too -- and the abundance almost seems too good to be true sometimes.

Blueberry cobbler by Michael ... with blueberries he picked that morning in Leicester

And as soon as the table is cleared, there is room for the next meal, and the next. Later in the week, we celebrated with our farm interns over breakfast with more incredible local food, and the abundance continued.

Butter homemade by Nicole from raw milk from Katie the cow next door.

Eggs from Gecko's chickens cooked to perfection by Dau

Butternut squash bread by Nicole

Homemade jams

I am deeply grateful not only for the abundance of nourishing, beautiful, and delicious food that we get to enjoy, but for the wealth of community that we create by connecting across kitchen tables and chopping blocks and farmers market stands.

Some of the people who helped grow food on the farm this year.

Garden Microcosm: Bloodflower

Bloodflower, also known as Scarlet Milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) in the garden this week.

Bloodflower is a beautiful plant that has traditional medicinal uses, but I just grow it for the butterflies, hummingbirds, and beneficial insects.

All of a sudden, the garden is all full of oranges, reds, and yellows. Golden Giant amaranth, Burgundy amaranth, sunflowers, red and yellow zinnias, Texas sage, and goldenrod. Fall colors.

Wild Harvests

With the avalanche of cultivated foods coming out of the garden right now, and gardening fatigue setting in, it's nice to pause and remember that there is food all around us, available for free, growing wild.

Our first human ancestors nourished themselves by foraging, and I believe that there is something deep in our collective memory that calls us back to wild foods. There's a childlike delight that I've witnessed when people encounter food, free for the taking, outside of a cultivated garden. It's a reminder that food is not a commodity, but a gift from the Earth and part of our connection to the Earth.

Last week my sister Mary and I took our farm interns blueberry picking on the Blue Ridge Parkway, where the five of us picked about 11 pounds of wild blueberries in a couple of hours. It was a lovely excursion, complete with a dip in one of my favorite swimming holes (pictured below) and enough steep uphill hiking to leave my leg muscles sore for a couple of days.

Picking blueberries on the parkway is an annual tradition for me, infused with childhood memories, radical politics, and love of all things wild -- I wrote about all of these things last year here: "Wild Blueberries Fresh from the Commons."

We brought this year's blueberries home and made all manner of blueberry treats, including sourmilk blueberry pancakes, 5 gallons of blueberry mead, a blueberry crisp, and of course, a blueberry pie.

The mead is bubbling away, the pie and crisp and pancakes are long-since gone, and a meager quart of blueberries are preserved in a mason jar in my freezer for some winter day when we need a little burst of antioxidant-packed, wild summer goodness. Our interns are harvesting Autumn Olives and Sumac this week for more wild foods preservation projects on the farm this week. And I'm feeling gratitude for all of the nourishment, wild and tame, that's available to us if we pause and look around.

Pausing for Gratitude

This time of year, marked with harvest festivals in many earth-based cultures, is a time to pause from the garden frenzy, take stock, enjoy the fruits of our labor, and be grateful. In the ancient Celtic calendar, one of the four major festivals of the year was observed at the beginning of August, called Lá Lúnasa, Lughnasadh, or Lammas, which was in that part of the world at that time the beginning of the main harvest season.

In years past, we have celebrated this time of year with fanfare; this year Lúnasa came and went without any vegetables being launched down the Swannanoa river or harvest altars being constructed, but I have been taking time to pause and give thanks for the garden this week.

I spent some time this week in the garden taking photos and feeling immense gratitude for all of the labor that created this bounty, and for the Earth's incredible abundance.

Here are a few shots from the past week in the garden and at market. Happy harvest!

Zinnias and Purslane

Black

Swallow-

tail

Moon & Stars Water-

melon

Cherokee Trail of Tears Black Beans

Edamame

Bush beans, edamame, and lots and lots of pole beans

Depp's Pink Firefly tomato - a gorgeous and delicious Appalachian heirloom that has been a heavy producer for us this year.

Tomato jungle in the hoophouse...

Cucumbers and Globe Amaranth

Sweet potatoes, squash, and pole beans

Edamame surrounded by pole beans

Cardoon flowering

Magenta spreen lambsquarters

Love-Lies-Bleeding and Autumn Joy Sedum

Moonflower climbing

Our tomatoes for sale at the West Asheville Tailgate Market

Italian heirloom frying peppers at market

Cherry tomatoes at market. We are growing the varieties White Currant, Peacevine, Sungold, and Black Cherry.

More tomatoes! Two of my all-time favorite slicers. The green-ripening Emerald Evergreen and the beautiful Flame/ Hillbilly.

Orange Banana, Pearly Pink, and Cream Sausage tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes, sunflowers, and zinnias in the garden...plus some found- object garden art!