Chow Chow - Hildred Mitchell's Recipe

Recipe:

1/2 pot  or more (big blue boiler) of sliced tomatoes and green onions.

2 handfuls of salt.  

mix in salt.  Put a dinner plate on top, and let sit over night.

In the morning, drain.

3 cups sugar

1/2 quart of vinegar, or tip until you can see the vinegar.

3 bags of pickling spice.

Taste and cook all morning.   Bottle.

It's October 1st.   Same day last year, we were doing the same thing.  Making Chow Chow.  We've been planning to make these for a couple of weeks now.   We dropped into the community gardens veggie stand yesterday and bought 11 pounds of green tomatoes.  We were lucky because normally they don't sell that many tomatoes to just one person, but we helped take out a row of frost bitten tomato plants and harvested about 20 pounds of green.   Since they should be used right away, she let me buy 11 lbs.    We were glad to get them...

Now using my husbands mother's recipe that we were able to get from our niece Brenda, we cut up our big pot full of green tomatoes and onions to make the chow.    We put a plate on top of the salted sliced veggies to weight them down overnight. 

Today is the day we cook.     After draining, rinsing and adding vinegar, spices and sugar, we are simply instructed to cook all morning and bottle.   If you think of cooking in the '50's, and 60's, more than likely, the recipes were cooked on a wood stove.   My husband said this was the case in his childhood home.   This would have simmered all morning on the wood stove.

I wonder who in the Mitchell family has the "Big Blue Boiler" pot. It must have been a big pot.  I am using my large Paderno stock pot, and it's pretty big.     I think of how busy she must have been in the fall.  Preparing pickles and other preserves from the fall harvest in her garden.   Of the 13 kids, she would have had at least 6 or 7 at home.  My husband was the youngest.  I expect she might have made several batches of chow.   All the family talk fondly of eating this with potatoes..

Today's yield.  8.5 pints.

I would add this note to the recipe.  

Stir often to prevent scorching!