Short answer is no, the fruit doesn't need sun to ripen. After they start blushing you can pick them and let them ripen inside. If you don't wait until blush you will get something along the lines of grocery store tomatoes.

If you have lots of large unripe tomatoes, perhaps you could use a couple in a cooked salsa, just to hold you over until the rest blush or ripen. I have made salsa this way and it is good. You do have to cook them though, otherwise, they have an alkaloid that is found when they are unripe. This gets destroyed by cooking, so always cook unripe tomatoes.

While you are waiting, you can made green enchilada sauce out of green tomatoes. I like it a lot better than green sauce made with tomatillos.

Simmer diced green tomatoes and a lot of diced onion together until the veggies are fall apart tender. Take it off the heat and add lots of roasted green chilies.

Your choice: cool and whirl in the blender to make a traditional smooth sauce, or use it chunky.

I don't add water, just stir carefully every now and again. The tomatoes will give off enough liquid.

The chilies lose flavor as they cook, so I put them in at the end. Poblano is my favorite for Mexican cooking, but the long green (Anaheim type) also work very well and are very mild.

At the end of tomato season, I make a lot of green sauce and freezer it. It's ready just in time to make turkey/ jack cheese enchiladas with the leftover Thanksgiving turkey.

Hang on for some ripe ripe tomatoes to make salsa. Especially if you've grown some cilantro, which is always better home grown than store bought. Fresh home made salsa with ripe tomatoes is the very best.

Thank you all for your information and suggestions. So, it comes down to, "be patient for ripe tomatoes, but there are tasty things you can do with the green ones in the meantime." :)

oregon: why do you like green tomato enchillada sauce more than tomatillo? I have both growing, and the tomatillos are doing well.

- Veronica