and while you’ll find them in “ethnic” sections, usually, they’re also usually in smaller sizes — which means they won’t go stale in your pantry.

I may have found the recipe for one of Grandma’s family specialties which she never could quite describe to me. It was a relish which I used to eat by the shovelful on anything you can put relish or pickles on, hot dogs in particular.

“Just gather up whatever’s left in the garden” she said, which given that I had never gardened at the time so didn’t know what came ripe or at least usable when, was not a whole lot of help.

Well, when she fell the last time and [long rant against medical protocols omitted] had to go to the nursing home she told my sister and me to go through her house and take whatever we wanted. Tragically we only had a relatively small car with us….plus there was then still thought to besome chance she might be able to come back after all so we didn’t want to completely loot the place. I stuck mostly to a couple of decrepit old pistols from her night table (neither of which had ammunition anywhere we could find) and pictures ’n’ papers. Especially recipes.

Except I could find no written documentation of the damn relish receipt! Until yesterday when I picked up an old church fundraising cookbook, not from her church but from Aunt Fern’s Nazarene outfit in Galesburg. Out from which fell a notecard, in a hand very much like Grandma’s but not quite hers, containing the following.

CHRISTMAS RELISH

10 green tomatoes
9 average onions
9 carrots
2 stalks celery
6 green and 3 red peppers

Grind all fine. Add 1/2 cup salt and let stand while mixing:

1 tbs. celery seed
1 tbs. mustard seed
3 cups vinegar
6 cups sugar

Drain vegetables, then add mixture and put in jars.

If this wasn’t Aunt Fern’s personal recipe I suspect it may have come from another sister, Aunt…Della? anyway, the one who stayed in Elmo MO. I had hers once and it was noticeably sweeter than Grandmas, and take note of the whacking quantity of sugar called for here.

I was just out having a chat with the tomato plants. Got two from the store which claim to be “disease resistant” and put them in the ground, in the corner farthest from where tomatoes have ever been grown before, in hopes they will avoid the fusarium wilt is what they call the stuff that made brown stripes grow up the vines last year, the leaves turn brown from the ground up, and yield to fall off to bupkiss. Others are residing in pots as they were sprouted from seed of a purported “heirloom” variety so presumably have no inbred resistance.

But only two out of the lot have even produced blossoms yet and I want them to get cracking, dammit. 10 green tomatoes…..ymmmmm…..

I’m gonna try this as maybe a half-batch first, done just as written but with about half the sugar called for. If that’s too tart I can always add more.

My mom’s specialties.
Here is a receipt for it, similar to hers:
Ingredients:

4 cups thin-sliced white or red onions (“hot” onions)
12 green peppers, stemmed, seeded and diced
6 red peppers, stemmed, seeded and diced
10 cups green tomatoes
4 hot peppers (mama used banana peppers or “jap chiles”.
I like jalapeno, or for really hot, serranos.)
4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon celery seed, ground fine
2 tablespoons mustard seed, ground fine
6 whole cloves
2 tsp whole peppercorns
2 bay leaves, crumbled
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
4 cups vinegar
1 1/2 cups water

Instructions:

Chop onions,peppers and tomatoes and mix together. Add 1/2 cup salt over them and let set 1 hour. Rinse and drain. Mix water, vinegar, sugar and spices together and bring to a boil. Pour over other ingredients and boil 5 to 8 minutes. Put in jars and seal.

I cheat. I buy “pickling spice” in a 3 oz. bottle, and put it in a tea ball for the boiling; I fish it out before jarring up.

There is a variation of this that uses cabbage, but Mama didn’t like that because it was bitter.

I can tell by your usage of the phrase “let set 1 hour.” This always causes me cognitive dissonance as battle breaks out between the part of my memory which finds this perfectly proper and that part which was beaten into me by grammar teachers over the years. I put a pillow over that part of memory and sit on its head. :)

I recognize the receipt you give but note the variance in the tomato-to-pepper ratio. Even leaving out the hot ones, chowchow is more of a pepper relish with the tomatoes serving to strech or fill out a quantity rather than as main ingredient. Alas, sweet green peppers and I do not get along in a peaceable manner as they back up on me.

Off now to wash, chop and freeze a batch of rhubarb. The four new ones started off slowly due to the Great April Freeze but are coming along nicely now. With six plants total (two of the previous four left from earlier years; what happened to the other two I have no idea) I’d like to get to the point where one mass picking can produce one entire crumble, aka “rhubarb fool.” (It’s not quite there yet, quantity-wise; this batch is about half of what I need, thus the time in the freezer.)

My mom was a big fan of rhubarb.
I’m a big fan of strawberries.
If either of us had put this receipt down from scratch the wording likely would’ve been “let stand 1 hour” (which is what she always did with doughnut batter — more on that another time ;) — but I did copy this from a book, because back when she was making this stuff every summer I was too stupid to take notes).

By the time I figured out I’d have to do my own, someday, from scratch, I’d lost Mom.

Your fool sounds good — is it like an apricot crumble?

I suckered one of our nurses at work this week. She makes a lovely pumpkin bread, and a nice zucchini loaf, but *never* heard of bread with dried fruit in it (Irish soda loaf, etc.)

So I turned her on to the oldest trick in the book:
Make biscuit dough. Add a spoonful of pie spice and a handful of chopped dried apricots (and if you’ve got any, a little minced candied ginger for the heat) and bake it.
(You can make gingerbread this way too and it’s yummy.)

Couldn’t find that fool recipe [hah! That’s one o’ them thar double-intender things] but ran across everything you’d ever want to know about rhubarb, with footnotes no less. Hell, I didn’t even know there were multiple varieties of the plant. I thought mine were growing green rather than red stems through some horticultural misdeeds on my part, or else just to be spiteful.

I may do a full scale Garden Post tomorrow on account of the holiday and all. I have some puzzling things going on (including Invasion of the Volunteer Potatoes!) and small scale bragging of a broccolic nature, and questions concerning the brusselling of brussel sprouts, and shit like that.

Might even lure CD out of lurkdom, who knows. I would very much like to know how her raised bed garden project came out. I’ve never really understood the concept I guess; I’m not even clear on whether the raised parts are where you plant the plants (and then walk in the non-raised pathways between them) or visey-versey. Nor am I clear on what advantage is gained by this evidently labor-intensive and expensive (assuming the beds remain in their erect and upright positions with the aid of large amounts of lumber) undertaking.

I mean as opposed to the old time hick method (aka “my way” of tilling a foot or so down with a shovel, rendering the resulting surface fairly flat with a hard rake, scratching out a reasonably—straight-if-you-squint-a-bit trench with a hoe, and putting plants/seedlings/seeds/rhyzomes (see rhubarb above, and also horseradish) into same, covering them over lightly, and standing back at a respectful distance and wait for something growth related to happen. Applying water in and weeds out as needed.

And addressing prayers and supplication to the Goddess of Canadian Cold Air Masses, a step I clearly neglected this year and paid the price for my impiety. Although more is coming back from the Great Freeze than I thought would do so.

What up, Shystee?!

When did Corrente turn into a food blog all the sudden?

Not that I’m complaining or anything. You know I loves me some ribs.