The Great Green Experiment Part 1

This week in the McKenney household we're going green. But it's not what you probably think. Due to the shortness of our summer/hot season, I've found that I have a TON of tomatoes in my garden, but very few of them have even started to turn red yet. I fear that a frost is coming soon (although today is no indication) and I don't want my entire tomato crop to go bad...so I looked up some recipes that use green tomatoes. I chose 4 recipes that I'm going to review for you in case you are having the same tomato problem that I am.

My first bowl of green tomatoes fresh from the garden.

The first recipe that I HAD to try mostly out of sheer curiosity was a green tomato pie. Interesting, right? I thought so, too. Now, let me preface this entire experiment with the fact that I HATE red tomatoes. They make me gag. I do like spaghetti sauce, etc and other things with tomatoes as the base...but eating an entire bite of tomato on it's own...gag. So keep that in mind as you're reading my opinions of these recipes.

So here is a pic of the green tomato pie. It looks good, right? Here's the recipe I used:

1 1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg (I omitted this b/c I don't like nutmeg)

1/4 cup + 2 Tb. flour

1 tsp Lemon peel (I also omitted this b/c I didn't have it)

6 med. green tomatoes tossed with 3 Tb lemon juice

1 Tb butter

Mix flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and lemon peel. Peel and cut up tomatoes, toss with lemon juice and add into sugar mixture. Mix lightly until sugar mixture coats all of the tomatoes. Put into prepared pie crust. Dot with butter. Top with top crust. Bake 35-45 min at 425. Serve warm.

*Josh deemed this pie: "interesting", Bryce said: "it's okay". I didn't like it...I just couldn't get over the fact that they were tomatoes. It was a little like apple pie, with a sour tang of tomatoes. If you like tomatoes and don't have a mental block like I do, I would recommend trying it though. Shortly after taking this pic of it, I took it outside and fed it to the chickens, who did appear to like it.

Fried green tomatoes.

The second recipe I tried was fried green tomatoes. A very Southern dish I believe. I have always wanted to try this since the movie. =) Yesterday I finally did. Here's the approximate recipe I used:

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1 Tb Italian seasoning

1/2 cup flour

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

(Mix together in a pie plate)

2 beaten eggs in another pie plate

Slice tomatoes. Dip in the flour mixture, then the egg, then the flour again. Fry in olive oil until golden brown on each side. Serve.

These were simple to make and I liked them better than the pie because it seemed a little more "natural" for a tomato to be served this way rather than in a pie. But I still didn't love it..tasted too tomato-y. But Josh did like it and the girls liked it. Again, if you like tomatoes, you should try it.

Part 2 of the Great Green Experiment will include a green tomato raspberry jam and green tomato bread. So stay tuned for those results.