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.