Pickled Goodies

Tonight was a very simple dinner: hamburgers. But it was made all the better because we opened up several jars of pickles and the piccalilli. My husband and I like the Spicy Bread and Butter pickles and the dills. My sister-in-law and the 9 year old like the regular Bread and Butter pickles. All 4 of us loved the piccalilli. It was awesome on the burgers.

The 5 year old abstained from the canned goods...but ate half a burger. Progress!

Green Tomatoes

Last week at the farm share they said you could take as many green heirloom tomatoes as you could use, so I threw some in my bag and thought about relishes. I had 7+ pounds and decided to make a chutney and piccalilli. It took a few days for me to get organized and have some time, but today was a good day for this.

First I started on the veggies for the piccalilli. I chopped 2 quarts of green tomatoes, 2 red peppers, 2 green peppers, and 2 large onions and mixed them with 1/4 c. of Kosher salt. This was covered and left on the counter. Then we went apple picking. Today was going to be the absolute last day for our favorite farm, so I figured we'd better go and go early. We arrived just 5 minutes after they opened to a parking lot full of cars. Even with that, the orchards weren't too crowded and we were able to get a half bushel of Empires, Golden Delicious, Cameos and Cortlands pretty quickly.

When we got home from the apple farm, the first project was pickling 2 more half-pints of jalapenos, since I had some more from this week's share. Even though the recipe is on line, I'll reprint it here:

12 jalapenos, sliced
1.25 c. vinegar (today I used cider)
0.25 c. water
1 tsp. Kosher salt
1/2 tsp. sugar

Boil the brine. Put the sliced peppers in jars and pour the brine over the top, leaving a 1/2-inch headspace. Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

While that was processing, I started this Green Tomato Chutney. This was boiled down for an hour and packed into 4 half-pint jars. The recipe claims to make 3 pints, but I only got 2. The chutney was processed for 15 minutes.

Finally, I drained the veggies for the piccalilli and got them boiling in 3 cups of vinegar and water solution (1 to 1), 2 c. of brown sugar, and 1 tsp. each of turmeric, dry mustard powder, and celery seed. This recipe claimed to make 6 pints, I only got 5. This was processed for 5 minutes. I tasted the small amount left in the pot and it is excellent.

I still have almost 2.5 lbs. of green tomatoes left. Any suggestions?