How Tomato Relish Changed My Life

A few months ago, I visited Granny B’s house, and she set before me a jar of tomato relish.  Relish, to me, was of the pickle variety and was made for plopping on top of hot dogs and stirring into potato salad.  I didn’t know other kinds existed.  The jar looked suspiciously like salsa, so I was hesitant to put too much on top of my rice (as all around the table were doing,) so I added just a little dab.  WA – POW!  The tomato relish hit my taste buds with much satisfaction!  I heaped two or three more spoonfuls onto my rice.  I added a spoonful to my greens.  Even the ham needed some, I thought.  I was a changed woman.  From then on, tomato relish would be a staple in my refrigerator.  It would come out to the table every time we had rice.  Granny B gave me the recipe, and I ran home to make it straightaway.

I will include here the wonderful recipe.  I devulged it to the Metter Advertiser as well when I was featured as the Good Cook of the week (brag brag,) but for those of you who made it and wondered why it didn’t taste right….. that would be because I left out the 2 cups of sugar.  Yeah, it’s a pretty essential ingredient, and really the reason that the stuff tastes so good.  Hey!  The best stuff is bad for you.  What can I say?

So, without further ado:

Granny B’s Tomato Relish

2 qt. tomatoes (or 2 cans)

1 cup vinegar

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups bell pepper, diced

1 1/2 cups onion, diced

1 Tbl. salt

1 Tbl. pepper

Cook for 30 min.  or until onions and peppers are done.

Simple, huh?

We eat a lot of this, so I put it up in glass canning jars and keep it in the fridge.  If you made a whole mess of it, you could seal the jars in a canner.  I would say 10 min would do it.  I actually have a grand plan to plant an insane amount of tomato plants this spring and put up many jars of tomato relish.  We’ll see how that pans out later.

I thought of putting this recipe on here because I had a big helping of tomato relish over rice for lunch.  I cooked up some bacon and crumbled it over the top, and had leftover apple muffins with it. Yes, not the healthiest lunch in the world.  I am packing on a nice layer before spring so I can have all the energy to work in the garden.  It’s part of the plan.

happy lunch

Speaking of the plan, I thought I would give a heads up that some of my spring seeds have already come in and more are on the way.  I will include my garden plan on here later, as it is a nice example of practical companion planting.  We have a lot of digging to do, since the spring garden is twice the size of the winter one.  I also planned for an herbal garden in the front and a strawberry patch on the side of the house.  Hopefully some of these seeds will actually sprout, and my neighbors won’t have to look at bare dirt for too long.

Cookies make me happy.

So, I return to cookie making.  Yes, cookies make me happy, and my jar does not stand long-empty before I am back in the kitchen, revving up the mixer for a new batch to satisfy my fix. Someday, I will open my own bakery and make cookies for everyone in Metter!  But until then I’ll just fatten up my four boys (and myself.)

I’m not going to include a list of my favorite cookie recipes, because none of them are mine.  I will, however, share with you my favorite cookie book:

http://www.amazon.com/Betty-Crockers-Cookie-Book-Best-Loved/dp/0028626036

I actually intend on getting a new copy, because mine is literally falling apart.  The project will also include the tedious task of transferring all my notes and ratings.  I love to write in my cookbooks.  I star the recipe (unhappy face for really bad, one star, two stars, three stars, and three stars and a happy face for superbly scrumptious) and include the date I first made it.  I include if it was for a special event, like a birthday, and if I added or omitted anything or altered the cooking directions, etc. or just why it was bad.  My cookbooks look a lot like my Literature textbooks, where I often jot down teaching ideas, point out literary references or meanings, and argue with the authors. Most of the recipes in my Betty Crocker Cookie Cook Book have three stars and a happy face.  Cookies are just good, and hard to mess up (unless you put them in the oven and go chase after your 2-year-old who has just opened up strawberry jello packets all over the sofa and attempted to eat them.)

I also stand by my grandmother, master of all things cookie, that the best cookie recipe was invented by Nestle Tollhouse and is conveniently located on the back of the yellow bag.

Peanut Butter Cookies

Cookies, btw, are not part of the cooking cheap section of this blog, but the part that involves staying sane.  I will say that box cookies are usually expensive and/or hard and basically will never be as good as its homemade version.  Cookie dough in a tube is really only good for eating raw, as a good friend of mine and I actually did once.  The main thing in cookies that costs any kind of money is the additives.  So, in chocolate chip cookies, you are paying for the chocolate chips; in the peanut butter cookies, the peanut butter; and so forth.  The way I get around this is to stock up on chips when they are on sale, and then put them up in the freezer.

Most drop cookie recipes involve the same process, so once you get used to it, you are the master of cookies.  I like to throw some butter Crisco in with the butter.  This makes the cookies come out a bit softer.  I also enjoy the whole batter process.  The butter and sugar get to “cream,” which basically means you beat the crap out of them until they smooth together into perfection.  Then the eggs and vanilla go in and get beat well until the batter fluffs a bit.  Finally, you slowly add the flour and scrape it all down and mix again.  Who would ever want to use “place and bake” cookies?!  Even with the craziness of homework and poopy diapers… there is always time somewhere to make a batch of cookies from scratch.

A note on bowl licking… bowl licking is an essential part of cookie-making, and anyone who scares you with the uncooked egg thing is just mean. There is no more simple joy than licking that butter/sugar concoction that sticks to the beaters. When my boys are home, it is a sign of my overwhelming love that I hand over the beaters to them to enjoy. But, if I am alone, the pleasure is all mine!

The entire experience of cookie making (and eating) makes me happy.  Honestly, it is one of the simple pleasures in life.  Unfortunately, cookies don’t use a single thing from the garden, so they fail completely in that respect.  Sometimes, however, you have to look beyond the practicality of things.  Cookies are just an absolute good.

An Overview of our First Attempt at a Winter Garden

I’m going to switch focus this week from cooking to gardening, mostly because I haven’t cooked anything spectacular this week.  I was going to focus on cookies, but my cookie jar has remained empty for an unprecendented four days, as new baby Lily B has demanded much of my time.  (I believe it is three week growth spurt time.)  So, I’m putting a hold on the joys of brown sugar and butter as they combine sweetly in a mixer, and moving on to the possibly equal joys of watching something green come up in dirt.  Now, here you might disagree with me.  Dirt over butter!?  But, essentially both cooking and gardening involve creating something out of nothing.  While cooking gives you more immediate gratification (10 minutes to convert gooey dough to perfect melty chocolate chip cookies,) gardening does require a little more patience.  Both involve making messes, which is one of my specialties.  And both give you that unparalleled satisfaction of seeing your hard work turn into something useful and (most times) delicious.

Before this winter, I had never tried growing food from the ground.  I have, on several occasions, attempted an herb garden.  My first attempt involved a neat row of baby food jars on the window sill of our brick apartment building in Korea.  They died before they reached more than two inches tall (I partly blame my husband who forgot to water them while I was in Savannah for the summer.)  My second attempt involved digging up part of the backyard at our Fayetteville rental house, which resulted in mostly dirt and weeds and a few struggling basil plants.  Undeterred, I had a plan for our official “First Winter Garden.”  After much research about companion planting and soil conditions and planting times, I ordered fifteen packets of seeds from the Burpee Seed Company: broccoli, cabbage, mustard greens, collard greens, turnips, rutabagas, radishes, beets, carrots, green onion, parsnips, spinach, bib lettuce, romaine lettuce, and brussel sprouts.  I was also enticed by the collards, broccoli and cabbage seedlings at the corner nursery (they also specialize in used furniture, interestingly enough.)  So, I picked up a flat of those as well.  So, the time had come!  My loving husband took his shovel to the sod in a sunny spot in the backyard, and put in four back-breaking days of digging a 24′ x 16′  plot for our garden.

Tony digging up the garden

I then poked the holes for the seeds and planted them (2 seeds in each hole, thinned to 1 when they came up,) and I lovingly put in all the seedlings of broccoli, cabbage and collards.  I spaced them apart according to the package, watered them well, and stood back to watch them grow.

Heidi showing off the seeds

Regrettably, my husband and I are terrible slackers.  Between school and crazy boys and getting ready for our new arrival, I am ashamed to say we didn’t care for our little garden very well.  We started up a compost pile in the summer, but there wasn’t enough to really use for the garden.  We kept saying, “we need to get some compost from the hardware store,”  but we didn’t.  After thinning the young little plants, I didn’t weed them.  The soil was not amended in anyway, and the oak leaves and pecans fell all over the garden through the fall and winter.  Occasionally, every few days, I would waddle out to the garden and check on things.  We had an unusually wet November, December and January, so I didn’t water the garden more than once or twice.

BUT… AMAZINGLY… STUFF GREW!!

Radishes and Candy Canes

Ok, we didn’t really plant Candy Canes….

But, we did get a lot of green stuff:

Our garden growing

I really couldn’t believe it!  Two incompetent, neglectful, out-of-town-half-the-time, brown-thumb individuals made something grow.  As Dr. Ian Malcolm would say, “life found a way.”

So, now I can say to you – if we could do it, you can do it!  And, you probably will have better luck growing bigger, better veggies if you are attentive and loving to your garden.

As it is, we are having rutabagas and collards tonight, and I have the privilege of walking out and pulling them out of the dirt.  Here you must agree, the joy of dirt can be equal to the joy of butter!  Both wonderful means to a tasty end.  And I might mention that my rutabagas, after being cleaned of their dirt, will be sauteed generously with butter for our dinner.  As Olga Dontsova, my wonderful Russian friend would say, butter is divinity!