Pickled Heirloom Tomatoes

I made pickled tomatoes today. The recipe, as I mentioned in my last post, comes from the William-Sonoma cookbook called The Art of Preserving.

I used a combination of Yellow Pear, Cherokee Purple, and Green Zebra tomatoes. Since I was using ripe tomatoes, and a little bit unsure how they will hold together in the pickling process, I kept as many of them whole as I could. Although the jars I used are 1 L jars, the Cherokee Purples were far too big to put them in whole though, so I had to cut them in to chunks.

In total, I ended up with 3 jars. If I really like how they taste and how they hold up over the next few months, I may make more than 3 jars next year.

The combination of apple cider vinegar, dill, pickling spices, garlic, onions, and celery salt definitely smelled appealing! I can't wait to taste them.

Megan

More Tomatoes and a Patty Pan Squash

Here are a few pictures that should give you a good idea of where we're at with our gardening.

The above picture is of some tomatoes that I picked today. Aren't they pretty? There's a Cherokee Purple, around five Green Zebras, and some Yellow Pear tomatoes. There are also some of my mom's grape tomatoes and regular red tomatoes there too.

To be perfectly honest, I'm starting to get tired of tomatoes, which is a shame, because our heirlooms are ripening really fast now. My mom's tomatoes were much earlier, so I was enjoying those before our heirlooms really got going.

I'm thinking about trying a pickled green tomato recipe from the Williams-Sonoma The Art of Preserving book, only it'll be a variety of pickled heirlooms. That way, myself and the rest of my family will be able to enjoy them in the winter. I'll have a post about that later if I do try it.


This is a lovely heirloom tomato salad that Jennifer and I made one night last week. It's a combination of all of our heirlooms, and a few of our mom's tomatoes. Jennifer cut up some basil to sprinkle on top. It's basically your standard tomato salad recipe with oil, vinegar, and salt and pepper.

And last but not least, this is our first patty pan. I noticed today that there's around six female blossoms in total between all of our plants, so I hope we'll manage to get a few more before the end of September.

Megan

September Tomatoes

Our tomato progress has been great as we've continuously been getting more and more tomatoes! This photo is of how one of our Yellow Pear cherry tomato plants looked last week. Needless to say that even after picking many tomatoes off this, it doesn't look like we harvested any!

Here is a picture of our first ripening Green Zebra tomato. Isn't it amazing? Megan and I have had difficulty judging when exactly these would be ripe, but have been judging their ripeness by how golden the background gets, how pronounced the green stripes are, and whether they're soft on the bottom. We picked some of these since and they are terrific for fresh eating with a slightly tangy, yet sweet flavour.

Here is an image of our first ripening Cherokee Purple tomatoes. I love the way these look so much with their pink-purple colour and how gigantic they are. I think these are the largest tomatoes that set on our plants.


Here is a mixture of tomatoes including some of our Mom's Early Girl tomatoes, our Yellow Pear Cherry tomatoes, and one Cherokee Purple. We picked all these between yesterday and today, so we'll likely make a very nice tomato salad tonight with a bit of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil, and salt and pepper. I've already tasted the cherry tomatoes, Early Girl, and Green Zebra, so I'm extremely excited to see what the Cherokees taste like.

This image is of more tomatoes we harvested yesterday and today, including two Cherokee Purples and a few Green Zebras, as well as more Early Girls. They all look so pretty together!

This is a close-up of Green Zebra tomatoes we harvested a few days ago, so we've picked about 6 or 7 in total now.

And another one from a few days ago....

And everything we've picked in the last two days....