Saving Summer - Canned cherry tomatoes!

Last weekend Josh and I traveled to Duxbury, MA to visit his great aunt Helen and help her with some seasonal yard-work. Now, Helen is no spring chicken but she is still an avid gardener in the summer months. One of our chores was to clean out her sizable vegetable beds in preparation for winter. Among the spent pepper, onion and carrot plants were these GIANT tangled cherry tomato plants with stems as thick as my wrist. They still had dozens of green cherry tomatoes attached, but it was too late in the season for them to turn and Helen didn't want them. So I took them!


I had been planning on pickling my own home-grown tomatoes, but my one tomato plant produced four measly fruits and it really wasn't worth the effort. I returned home with a bag-full of green tomatoes ready for canning. Unfortunately, I have zero pickling/canning experience. What did I do? Googled "how to pickle tomatoes," of course!

After scanning half a dozen recipes I came across one from Plate to Plate that recommended using your finished pickled cherry tomatoes as a garnish in MARTINIS! Well, needless to say, this is the recipe I decided to use (slightly modified) for my own tomatoes :)

I made two batches. One I cold pickled, which means they go directly into the refrigerator and keep for about two weeks. The other I canned and stored and should be ready in six weeks.

image from www.platetoplate.com

I see quite a few "summertinis" gracing my glass this fall...

Bottoms up!