Last weekend, we got a whole basket of fresh tomatoes at the farmer's market , and got them all for $3 because they had blemishes. We have been eating some, but I needed to use them up before they got bad. I cut out the blemishes and then made almost 2 quarts of fresh salsa, and a pint of raspberry-tomato jam. I made the jam with sugar-free sweetener and jello; so there is only one carb per 1oz. Serving of jam. When you add the little bit of fresh raspberries and the raspberry jello to the tomatoes, it all comes out tasting like raspberry jam. Tomatoes are much lower in carbs than fruit is, so this is a perfect way for me to have jam that I can eat on my ketogenic diet. Since not very many people are on that diet right now, I am not posting recipes, but I will post them if anyone anyone wants the recipe.
I never would have thought of mixing tomatoes in with the berries. Tomatoes are on my list of foods to avoid because of the acid, but I love them, and still eat them now and then. I am hoping to make salsa someday, but mine will be salsa verde, because I can tolerate that a lot better than the regular red salsa. It sounds as if you're doing a lot to improve your health, and cutting out the prepared foods no doubt helps a lot with that.
The salsa and jam both turned out great, and I shared the salsa with my daughter, Robin. She doesn't like jam or I would have shared that with her, too. This low-carb jam is perfect for me to have just a dab along with my meal. I love cranberries, and have been seriously thinking about whether I could use the same idea and make my cranberry sauce and keep it low-carb if I use the tomatoes along with fresh cranberries. There is only 8 carbs in a whole cup of cranberries, and 5 in a cup of tomatoes, so if I mix them and then add the sugar-free jello to thicken it, I can have cranberry sauce with my turkey for Thanksgiving. One of my main goals is to be pain-free with a natural diet, so cutting out all of the inflammatory foods has been a priority for me. I am not always 100% on that, but I figured if I can get about 80%, then I can feel the benefits, and still enjoy some of the foods that we think of as comfort foods. Unfortunately, most of those foods may make a person feel happy when we eat them, but then we suffer with aches and pains from the inflammation in our muscles and joints afterwards.
When I was finding the sauerkraut and kimchi recipes on YouTube, I was looking at other ideas for fermented foods, to add even more probiotics into my diet. One of the things that I found was fermented salsa. I have made fresh salsa before, never considered trying to ferment any. However, I remember eating some salsa that had kind of a tang and a sourish flavor, different from plain fresh salsa, so I am now thinking that maybe it was fermented. Anyway, today, I tried making some, and it looks good. We can start using it right away as fresh salsa, and then keep tasting it as it ferments, to see where we want the fermentation to stop.
Yvonne, you and my SIL (brother's wife) would get along great. She loves making homemade food, like canning stuff. Something that I believe isn't done much today. My mom, back in the mid-late 60's, did a lot of canning as well. Tomatoes, peaches and other things out of the garden we had.
Actually, that first post was made almost 4 years ago, if you look at the date, It was fall, and the very end of fresh tomato season here in Alabama. People had been having fresh tomatoes for several months, so the prices were coming down as the demand went down. The farmers market wont open for another couple of months here, but by the end of May, we should maybe start to have fresh from the garden tomatoes at the farmers market for this year. So, the salsa, was just with Roma tomatoes from walmart. Not near as much flavor, but still good.
In my old age I have come to love picanti salsa. I add it onto many foods. I think I like it best on scrambled eggs. i don't know I have ever eaten any home made salsa.
We grew some tomatillos this year, so this was my first time making salsa and adding in the tomatillos. I used the ripest red tomatoes and the tomatillos. It came out not as red as regular salsa, but not green like salsa verde either, and it tastes pretty good ! I like salsa with just a little bit of grated carrots (it adds some interesting sweetness), so when I cooked everything , I added the carrots, too. I don’t know if I will try growing tomatillos again. There was a lot of vine and not that much fruit, and a lot of it was still really tiny when I harvested all of it; but it was interesting to at least try growing some.
I think the secret to growing tomatillos is to neglect them--not much water, no fertilizer unless you add a little phosphorus--but lots of sum and warmth.