Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone, but rather than throw them at people, I’m going to make them into sauce. I did call our local food pantry, but they are “at capacity” with produce–the guy said that everyone has a bumper crop of tomatoes this year because of all the rain we’ve had. So Gatopescado, please share your recipe! Also lmk how you store your sauce. I’ve never canned or jarred anything before, so the more details the better. Thanks!
One pound each: Mild Italian sausage, Hot Italian sausage, Ground Beef.
Brown all that while you chop up about 8 big cloves of fresh garlic and one big ol’ onion.
Toss that in with the browning meat. Add a copious amount of ‘Italian Spices’ (mostly rosemary, basil and thyme). Dump in some salt and a few red pepper flakes. And a Bay Leaf!
When the meat is pretty well browned, put in as many cut up tomatoes as the pot will hold. About 4 cups of your favorite cheap red wine (cabernet works well) and a can of tomato PASTE.
Let it come to a slow boil, uncovered. Once there, add some small cut up zuchinni if that floats your boat and a boat-load of mushrooms (cut to your size preference).
Reduce heat to the bare min! Stir it all up, cover with a tiny vent to let the liquids vapor off for about 3 hours or as long as it takes to take the dogs for a ride in the Jeep and get some beer down your neck.
Come home, stir now and then.
Okay, here is the important step… Turn off the heat, close the lid and let it sit. Maybe an hour or so. Eat some tonight, let the rest go to the fridge for the night.
The next day, seal all it up in those plastic Glad thingys* (they take about 7or 8 big ladelfulls of sauce) and toss them in the freezer. Dinner for days! I’ll fill maybe 5 of these things and it’s a perfect serving size for two people (who eat a lot). All you gotta for spaghetti nite is boil the noodles, heat up the frozen sauce and not burn the garlic bread.
*Glad Thingy, or Rubbermade. They about the size of a … Well, they are about 5"x5" square, maybe 2" deep. Perfect size I’ve found for 2 people. We like our sauce!
Rock on, Baby!
And the hint to freezing in those plastic Glad storage containers is seal one corner and squeeze the lid down as you go, forcing out all the air and the sauce is right up against the top. Keeps well for at least a year, I’ve found. Just as good thawed/heated up as the day it was cooked.
Why are we up at this time of day?
Good question. I’d get started on my sauce, but I’m going to have to borrow a vat to hold that much meat & all these tomatoes. Love the storage tips. I was worried you were going to send me out for a pressure cooker or Ball jars or something else intimidating. But I already have those Glad Thingies 
Glad Thing!
I think I love you…
But I wanna know for sure.
Sock it to me one more time!
I Love You.
No recipes but I freeze my cherry tomatoes whole. I just wash them, set them on a cookie sheet, place them in the deep freeze and then a couple of hours later bag them up in freezer bags. Doing it that way keeps them from freezing into a clump.
Come winter I grab a couple handfuls and throw them in roasts, stews or rice dishes. Sometimes I throw a few into a glass of V-8 as ice cubes. They thaw out as juice with a tiny bit of pulp and the skins fall off. I have the orange cherry tomatoes because I prefer their “bright/acidic” taste to red cherry tomatoes.
I’m hoping this year to find a good sour green tomato pickle recipe. All I recall my mother using was whole dill flowers, salt, vinegar and … alum? Almost all the recipes I have found so far call for sugar (usually a lot of it) and various spices that I never saw in her house (salt and pepper were about it). I despise sweet pickles.
I don’t know if its been the weird Chicago weather lately or what, but we have a ton that are all green, green, and greener still.
OH MY GOD. The good local tomatoes haven’t arrived in NYC yet. I’m visiting a sister in Cleveland next week and am hoping to hit the opening of tomato season…the tomatoes of my youth have always seemed more lush and delicious than any east coast ones.
As for you, do a Cafe Society search for my “Best Gazpacho” thread. DON’T make any other gazpacho until you try that NY Times recipe from 3 (?) years ago. That gazpacho will make you SHIT IN YOUR PANTS, it’s so delicious.
Same here in Chicago. Tall-ass plants, still green tomatoes, but I typically don’t get red tomatoes until a couple weeks into August, I want to say. I plant after Mother’s Day, and I don’t have any early varietals.
I make tomato soup and freeze it in bags and this lasts ages, also marinara sauce.
The other thing I have done is dry them with a friends dehydrator, nice to add to sauces for flavour.
Always wanted to make green tomato chutney, so maybe next season.
OK!! I’m adding gazpacho to the list!! And marinara sauce for my now vegetarian teenager. I’ve never made any of these before, so fingers crossed it will be a success!!
Maybe I’m misremembering the usual timing. We do have a couple of early girl plants, but come to think of it, those are the ones that got a bit choked with weeds and aren’t doing great.
I like the recipes that don’t involve any peeling and you just blend everything really well after stewing.
There’s a trick that works well enough for me when I don’t feel like peeling them (using the typical criss-cross-cut-and-dunk-in-boiling-water method). Got a box grater? Grate the tomatoes over the pencil-sized hole section–you know, the cheese grating side. Most of the skin stays back. It’s probably not quite 100% efficient (you’ll end up with a little tomato clinging to the bit of skin when you get towards the end), but it works a treat for me. Here’s an example of what it should look like. I don’t even bother to cut the thing in half. I just smash the tomato against the grater and grate away (the skin doesn’t seem to want to grate.)
My parents used a foley mill to process the tomato soup. That removed all the skins, and wasn’t too much work.
Or better yet, a spicy tomato sauce with plenty of garlic.
We are on the verge of Tomatogeddon here (started harvesting about 10 days ago, and the motherlode is ripening, including anthocyanin-rich purple-black varieties). I anticipate numerous containers of Mrs. J.'s famous spaghetti sauce.
Gazpacho. All the gazpacho.