My wife makes pickled green tomatoes that I like very well by using hot bath method.

Tree,

Simple water bath canning and pickling of tomatoes doesn't require a lot of special equipment.

If you have the canning jars and lids, you can use any tall stock pot as a canning kettle.

If you don't have a metal rack to place the jars in so you can lower them into the pot of water, you can merely put a folded kitchen towel on the bottom of the water-filled pot before you place the filled jars in it. The towel will serve as a cushion that lifts the jars slightly off the bottom of the pot, which can prevent them from bouncing around slightly in the boiling water and cracking. You just use the jar lifter to put the jars in the water and then to take them out once they are done.

You probably do need a jar lifter that would enable you to lift the jars in and out of the pot of water because there's just no other way to handle really hot jars without burning your fingers. A jar lifter should be available on the canning aisle of your local Wal-Mart. I haven't bought one in a long time, but they should be less than $10.00. I still have one that I bought back in the 1980s and I think it cost be a dollar or two back then.

The only other truly essential item is the lid lifter---just a magnet on the end of a long plastic handle. You use the lid lifter to remove the lids from their pot of hot water so you can place the hot lids on the filled jars. Some people that I know just use metal salad tongs instead of a lid lifter, but I have found a lid lifter easier to use. Lid lifters are on the canning aisle, generally less than $5. Sometimes you can get a canning kit that contains the jar lifter, lid lifter and a rubber spatula that you use to remove aid bubbles from the jars all together in one package on the canning aisle. Or, if you already have a slender spatula, you can use it instead of buying the special one on the canning aisle. Our local Wal-mart here usually sells them both ways---individually or as a set.

With green tomatoes you can make pickled green tomatoes or green tomato relish. Both are easy to preserve using the boiling water bath method, so any pot of water that will allow you to have a couple of inches of water above the tops of the jars will work for you.

I'm going to link the website of the National Center for Home Food Preservation for you. It contains the recipes you need that will help you use up your green tomatoes. The specific recipe I'm linking is the recipe for Spiced Green Tomatoes, but there also is a recipe on that website for Pickled Sweet Green Tomatoes too.

The key thing is to follow the recipes exactly in order to ensure food safety. While people experiment with regular cooking recipes and add this or that to make the recipe their own, you cannot do that in canning. Only the tested, safety-approved recipes should be used with no variations unless the recipe comes with a range of approved options. If you add something to an approved canning recipe that was not in the original recipe as it was tested and approved, it can change either the food pH or density, and either change could result in food that allows invisible toxic microorganisms to grow.

With the winter squash, it will store well for months and months as long as it was mature and the rind was hard, but there's also recommendations on the NCHFP for how to preserve pumpkins and winter squash. If you have a lot of small trombocino squash that are more like summer squash due to their small size and relative immaturity, you can use them the way you use any summer squash, and that includes for squash pickles.

I harvested oodles of sweet and hot peppers so this week I've been busy making hot pepper relish, which uses a combination of sweet and hot peppers.

My winter squash are out in the garage in clear Rubbermaid storage totes. If their rind is hard and they are mature when I harvest them, they will store out there for 9 months or longer. For the ones that were full-size or almost full-size but still green, a lot of those also will slowly turn to their mature color but the smallish ones that are fairly immature don't store long, so I use those up first.

Hope this helps,

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP: Spiced Green Tomatoes Recipe

I only grow tromboncino as summer squash and with extra I have made squash pickles in the past. This year I just shredded them and put 2 cups in each freezer bag and froze them to use in recipes. How about zucchini bread for Christmas?

I have only tried this half way. But it looks like it's going to work. I sliced some green tomatoes, laying them on waxed paper on a cookie sheet. Then I froze them. Once frozen, I lifted them off the sheet and put them in zip lock bags, back in the freezer. They are now ready to be used for a winter time treat of friend green tomatoes.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Thanks all I need to buy some jars.
Tree