Because I am apparently a glutton for punishment who did not get my fill of vegetable prep yesterday, with these wonky joints?
Behold: this evening's plan!
That's the latest rather pitiful haul of hard little end of season tomatoes which needed to just come off the plants. Which should at least be good for pickling! They're all rock hard, and stunted except for the few cherry tomatoes. I don't actually have much experience pickling riper-looking ones, but even those are hard enough that they should hopefully hold up OK.
They may be growing in the balcony room, but the plants are obviously really Not Happy with the dropping sunlight levels and temperatures out there. (It was already marginal enough on light, and I may well set up some LED panels this coming season. Because I am that kind of stubborn nerd.)
There were not as many tomatoes as I thought, and a couple of the bigger ones had just started going off on the plant before they were even completely red. Nowhere near enough harvest to fill up one of our fermentation lock lid jars. I could just cram them in another smaller jar without the handy airlock, but nah.
I'll just bulk it out with some or all of these other storebought veggies! 😎
(Plus some other seasonings, which I haven't quite settled on yet.)
Been meaning to put together some kind of mixed brine pickles anyway, now that I can eat them again. Excellent excuse to get at least one jar going, and honestly it should turn out more appealing than those somewhat questionable tomatoes on their own. I hope.
Going with the seasonal theme, I may also put together a jar or two of old school brine pickled chow-chow with some of that cabbage, once I pick up peppers for it. Not surprisingly, vegetable combos vary a lot for that type of relish. In my family, at least, what gets called chow-chow mostly uses cabbage, peppers (sweet and optionally hot), onion, and maybe some carrot plus spices including turmeric to turn it bright yellow. If you throw other veggies together into a similar type of relish, it is more likely to turn into piccalilli. Or just, "idk, it's some kind of mixed relish". 😁 Which all mostly does get sweet vinegar pickled by now, but I like it the other way too.















