DIY -- farmer's market

I'm hitting the farmer's market today for cucumbers, beets, cabbage, and hopefully a couple of green tomatoes.

There are things you can't get in your local store unless you live in the right place.  You may find them in a farmer's market or a specialty market, but you might have to drive a ways to get there.

Chow chow is a cauliflower and green tomato relish I grew up with.  I lived on the western edge of Pennsylvania Dutch country and I always connected the two.  Now I've found that almost all the old cookbooks online have a recipe for it.  It's how you make sure not to waste what you can't eat fresh for several vegetables that don't keep well.

Picallilli is a green tomato relish that uses up what stayed green late in the season and so there aren't a lot of alternatives for preserving it.  I've found recipes for green tomato catsup but piccalilli is less work.  Might make some fried green tomatoes as well.

The beets you can straightout pickle of course, and that will cost you half  what you spend on the  little jars in the store.  You can drop hard-cooked shelled eggs in the sauce for pickled eggs of a beautiful red color.  BUT I'm going to make a batch of traditional Jewish fermented beets, which seems to have been adopted in Ukraine.  It's called Russell and you use it to make borshcht just like you do with fresh beets. 

Then I have an old recipe for garlic dill pickles and another for sweet mustard pickles.

With the cabbage, I might make some Amish sweet pickled cabbage with my home grown carrots, but only after I shred a bunch of it up for sauerkraut.

My kitchen is going to smell SOOO good this week.

© Patricia Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved