Finally the last of the tomatoes 

or Thanksgiving Guinea Pigs

Before the first frost I picked the last remaining tomatoes and uprooted the plants so there could not be anymore.  I collected over six pounds of green tomatoes.

I actually waited a week or two before I got around to finding a way to use this many tomatoes.  There were two reasons for this.  One was because they were all green and hard and I had to put them in paper bags and wait for them to ripen.  The second reason was that I lacked motivation.  I just really did not want to make and freeze anymore salsa, pasta sauce or chopped tomatoes.  Then Mike and I joined the girls at Roosters Best Breakfast in Missouri restaurant and I was introduced to Tomato Jam.

At Roosters, both Suzanne and I had one of the customer favorites- a goat cheese and tomato jam savory crepe.  It included spinach and mushrooms but the best part was the tomato jam.  It was both sweet and spicy and made the dish.  I went home and started searching for recipes.

Many of the recipes suggested canning the results.  I have never done this before but I really need another method to store all this produce Mike and I keep growing.  Right now my freezer is so full of frozen produce I cannot get anything else in there.  So after several trips to the store I collected all the ingredients I needed for my recipe and all the equipment I needed to can my jam.

I was finally ready to start and I unwraped the blue enamel canning pot with canning rack and read the instructions.  Practically the first thing it said was that this pot could not be used as a water bath for canning jars on a glass cooktop.  I have a glass cooktop.  Using this pot could cause the cooktop to crack and, they added, the cooktop would not be able to maintain a consistent temperature for boiling the jars as it had a concave bottom.  After much deliberation I decided to make the tomato jam anyway and just eat it fast.  

Hence, the other title for todays blog.  I am going to pack some of these jars of tomato jam and take them to California for Thanksgiving.  After all I am going to need to use them up quickly and there are 17 lucky people coming over for dinner who will get a chance to try this new recipe.  I think I will pour the tomato jam over cream cheese and serve it with crackers as an appetizer.  Who knows?  Maybe it will surpass the turkey as the best dish.