Green Tomato Cake
Original recipe called for only 3 tbsp cocoa, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla and 1 3/4 cups brown sugar. I found it too sweet and not chocolatey enough. So I substituted 1 cup granulated sugar instead of the brown, increased the cocoa and left out the spices. I also did not put in the vanilla. Next time I might add about 1/2 teaspoon salt, even though there’s salt in the margarine. This makes nice moist cupcakes. I doubled the recipe, made cupcakes and a bundt cake. Even with the baker’s pan coat (equal parts shortening, cooking oil, and flour) on the pan, those chocolate chips that migrated through the batter to the bottom remained stuck to the pan after the cake was released. The bundt cake was delicious with chocolate syrup drizzled over it. The cupcakes were really good with peanut butter frosting on them, which I got from my friend Sandy. Yum.

2 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup sugar
1 cup buttermilk (or kefir, George)
3/4 cup margarine, softened
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup pureed green tomato
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup walnuts, chopped

Combine dry ingredients in large bowl. Add buttermilk, margarine, eggs, vanilla and tomatoes. Beat at medium speed until well blended. Fold in chips and nuts. Pour batter into greased and floured 13x9 inch pan. Bake at 350º, 35-40 minutes, or until pick comes out clean.

Sandy's Peanut Butter Frosting:
Sandy said, "Most of the time I use all of the sugar. The water makes it very light and it doesn't have a strong after taste. You may have enough icing for two cakes, but this is the best recipe I have ever made."
1/3 cup crisco
1/3 cup peanut butter
2 tsp vanilla
1 (2 lb. bag) 10x sugar
1/4 cup ice water approx.
Cream together on low speed peanut butter, crisco, and vanilla. When it is smooth, start adding powdered sugar. About a cup at a time. Alternate with ice water. Beat on high speed. Keep adding powdered sugar and water until you get a stiff consistancy. It will be light and fluffy and have a good peanut butter taste.

I'm kinda tired of processing anything, but here awhile back I did make some green tomato salsa. There are some recipes online. And I also made some ad lib red and green tomato salsa. For those die hard salsa fans on here, that might be an idea.

I still have jobs of green tomatos on the vines, but frankly, they might just have to stay there. I'll probably renew my enthusiasm about the time the spring catalogs start rolling in :)

Anyways, we keep missing the frosts, and the tomatos still keep growing outside the little greenhouse. But I did cover up some other winter veggies last night due to another false alert. About the time I think they're crying wolf again, we'll probably get a hard freeze.

btw, I'm jealous over your yummy sounding dessert. And it's just the right season to want to start baking. Seems like anything I put in the oven is going to have a bazillion calories.

Barbara

That recipe made me want to go right outside and pick green tomatoes, but I think I'll restrain myself and let them ripen to red until the first hard freeze threatens. I'll likely have a bunch of green ones when the weather does finally get cold enough to freeze out the plants.

Barbara,

I think I gain weight just from looking at the photos in the King Arthur's catalogs.....

I'm getting tired of processing stuff too, but I do appreciate the green beans that I continue to pick a couple of times a week and put up in the freezer. They got off to such a slow start because of the abnormally cool and rainy fall weather, but they're making up for it now.

I do think I am ready for that first freeze to hit because I am hitting the 'garden burnout' stage. If it arrives at the 'right' time statistically, we'll have our first barely-freezing weather in the next 5 or 6 days, and then our first hard killing frost 7-14 days later. Really, though, when I look at our 10-day forecast, it looks pretty darn warm.

I like it when the cold weather arrives late, but the whole garden has been so productive this year that I am just ready for it all to end. I feel guilty saying that, though, because I know that the morning after the first hard freeze, I'll be regretting that the fresh produce season is essentially over. LOL A person needs a break, though, after a long and productive gardening season and I am ready for the break.

Baking season is here and I am ready for it. I need to bake some muffins and rolls and other baked goodies and then freeze them in order to use up some of the fresh eggs from our hens. We have 5 or 6 dozen eggs in the fridge now, and "the girls" are laying more per week than we normally eat.

Everything I like to bake is fattening. I can bake healthy low-fat or low-carb goodies, but I don't want to!

Dawn

I did not go out and pick last night, even though there was a frost warning, and looks like my tomatoes might be OK again. Mesonet said we only got to 35 but I went grocery shopping this morning and haven't yet walked around out in the garden for the day.

The other day I made tortillas with half of the AP flour replaced with freshly ground whole wheat flour. Rolled out thin, browned slightly on a hot griddle, then made taco meat, which I dressed up with a pint jar of salsa and cooked that down. Went out and picked some swiss chard and a few small leaves of romaine. Had a few tomatoes that turned red on the counter, and some grated sharp cheddar. Oh, my, that was quite a healthy treat.

I'll put my tortilla recipe on if anyone wants it. It's lower in fat than most of the recipes I've seen. It's a little work to make them but home made is SOOOOO much better than what you can buy in the store.

I'm watching my sugar intake too, and have been for months, so most of these cakes I bake, I don't each much or any of. DH and DGS take care of that. I find if I don't have something like that for them to snack on, they're in there eating the meat left over from the previous meal, as a snack! What IS it about these men and MEAT, anyway? It would be great if they liked veggies as well as George does, but that is not the case. I have to hide fried chicken so that we can have the leftovers for another meal. Can't tell you how many times I've gone to the fridge at lunch time, prepared to heat up a few leftovers, and the side dishes are all there but the meat's gone!

I've lost 30 pounds since the beginning of May, fell "off the wagon" with --what else-- cake, and didn't lose any weight for a month or maybe closer to two. But I'm back into it now, hope for another 10 off by Thanksgiving and a goal of a total of 50 pounds lost by Christmas. Sorta my Christmas gift to myself. That first 30 pounds was the easiest weight I ever lost, and it was just by eating right, watching portion sizes, and not eating sugar. I was never hungry, never felt deprived, or even like I was "on a diet". Everything I ate was something I enjoyed. I'm hoping that I will be able to change my eating habits for the rest of my life and never have to lose these pounds again. I have been up and down all my life and I'm just getting too old to do this.

I've seen the recipes for green tomato salsa, and I read somewhere that actually you can replace half the red tomatoes for green in stews and casseroles. I love tomato preserves and I wonder what green tomato preserves would taste like. I bet it would be really pretty in the jar. Of course, making this would be a waste of time, probably, because I'm the only one here that likes tomato preserves and I'm not eating sugar, and I got a lot of quizical looks from people when I gave jars of red tomato preserves for Christmas presents. Only one man was obviously happy, saying he hadn't had any of that since his grandmother died. Guess it must be one of those "acquired tastes". sooooooo...... Some people love those tomato preserves that you make with raspberry jello and I think THAT is positively nasty! But maybe for people with THAT "acquired taste", they could substitute peach or apricot or lemon jello for green-tomato preserves.

I also like watermelon preserves, but my family thinks that is too awful to think about. LOL

If I have surplus melon, I puree it and freeze it. Every now and then I thaw out a container and make popsickles. I've never grown watermelon so have never had a surplus of that but I had extra cantaloupe last year and the cantaloupe popsickles were good. With no added sugar, they were not diet-busters either. DGS will eat those and so they go pretty fast, between him and me.

Kids do love grape jelly. Considering how much work it is to make, and then how it turns to sugar in the refrigerator a lot of the time, even though I follow the instructions on how to prevent that, I think I would vote for just buying a big jar at Sam's every now and then. But my grandkids are grown and are past that. Both DGS' have friends who have fathered children but so far neither has made me a great-grandma yet (I hope) and I'm grateful for that.

Today I crock-potted a pork tenderloin roast with some of my home-made sauerkraut. I didn't think I was going to like it and came close to throwing in some rosemary and maybe a little brown sugar. But I didn't and it was pretty good once it was done. It just didn't smell very good while it was cooking. DH went back for seconds so I guess he must've thought it was good. The next time I make this I think I'll roll the roast in flour and then brown it in oil all the way around before it goes into the crock pot. I felt like it needed a little something but I can't put my finger on what it would be.

Oh, and Dawn I have opened that first jar of hot pepper rings, the ones that were soaked in lime. They are pretty crunchy and not very hot, even for me! But the flavor is good. I wonder if the lime soak takes away some of the hot. Next jar I open will be one that I just put up with a half vinegar, half water brine. I'll let you know how that turns out.

I bet the beans just ran out of steam. For them to last as long as they did is aswfully good.

Congrats on the weight loss! That's wonderful. I gained weight this summer because the cougar scares kept me inside too much, and I just wouldn't walk the dogs like I used to. I also ate too much junk food and I knew when I was doing it that I shouldn't, but I did it anyway. I've been eating better and working out more (but inside, not out) and am losing the weight I gained over the course of the summer.

We haven't tried our pepper rings yet because Tim had a huge jar in the fridge (a Sam's Club-sized jar) when I made ours and he hasn't finished it yet. I may have to open a jar of them, and one of the bread and butter pepper rings too, tomorrow, just to sample and see if they are as hot as expected or not. I do wonder if the lime somehow sucked the heat out of them.

Dawn