Vegetables: redux!

[morleyroarly]

So the winner of the "what shall I make" debate yesterday was:

Veggie lasagne! Thanks nat_marion! I know, not terribly glamorous, but tasty and freezes well. Convenient, as we have friends coming for dinner tonight!

So I used half the broccoli, the zucchini, some of the peppers and all the milk. I also roasted and skinned all the hot peppers and froze those, for future use in quesadillas, enchiladas, salads, etc.

Now we have Veggie Projects Part Deux! What do we do with:

-Approximately ONE HUNDRED green tomatoes. They are in the basement now wrapped in newspaper, which Grandma Tarka says will allow them to ripen. I hope they do! If so, we'll have a ton of ripe tomatoes, and I imagine we'll can some salsa/sauces/juice. Anyone got good HOT salsa recipes? If not, we need to figure out what to do with 100 green tomatoes. We don't really eat relish or pickles. Hmm.

-Still have a dozen small red peppers which need to be used soon. Question: can one blanch and freeze red peppers for future use in stir fry, pasta, etc?

-Still have plenty of broccoli and potatoes. Bought bacon. Planning to make a potato broccoli chowder with bacon. Yum, bacon! If anyone has a good recipe for something like this, I'm all ears. So far, I've found: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Creamy-Potato-Soup/Detail.aspx

-Have I mentioned we have a lot of green tomatoes? Yeah, LOTS, about a hundred. And that's not counting the dozens of teeny little ones that Tom lovingly pried from the bushes, ranging from grape to kumquat sized.

-Oh, we also have two lovely yellow squashes! Small ones, zuch sized.

Thank you to everyone for their advice and suggestions!

Comments

[morleyroarly.livejournal.com]

AHA! This looks fabulous. We'll see if they ripen... I kinda almost hope *not*, because this salsa sounds yum! :)

[slownewsday.livejournal.com]

Are the tomatoes going to be red when they ripen or will they still be green? I never done seen no green tomato before, yup.

[morleyroarly.livejournal.com]

They're green on the vine. Typically they ripen to red on the vine, but we had our first frost of the year last night, so we picked all the green ones.

Tom's grandmother has been a canning/gardening maven for years, and according to her if you wrap the green tomatoes in newspaper and keep them in the basement, they'll ripen (to red) in due time. Supposedly they do the ripening at *night*, which I find intriguing!

Anyhow, I'll be sure to post one way or the other regarding the validity of the ripening-in-a-cold-dark-basement theory.

[isis-page.livejournal.com]

Ratatouille would be my suggestion, I make it when I have lots of veggies like you do. :)

[mercurialcirce.livejournal.com]

fried green tomatoes!

Check out the link embedded in "tomatoes" if you like New Orleans or Creole cooking. Since you mentioned the hot factor for salsa, I figured you might. :)