Tomato glut (Episode 1)

Hi Friends,
Massively busy time of year for gardeners. If I'm not watering it, feeding it, staking it up & picking it, you can be sure I'm in the kitchen peeling it, chopping it & turning it into tasty things for the months ahead. I have always turned into a sort of greedy squirrel at harvest time, never happier than when the pantry is bursting with colourful jars & bottles of yum. My Nan's old cauldron barely has time to be put away before it's out again.

I first got interested in making chutney in my teens, when my Nan used to use her unripe tomatoes to make her annual green tomato chutney. It was mild, sticky with sugar & sultanas & it went with absolutely everything savoury. Nan lived through times where no food was thrown away, & this definitely applied to green tomatoes! She gave me the recipe, but as I got more confident with preserving, experimenting with more fancy creations, I lost it. Shame, because although there are plenty of recipes for green tomato chutney, I'd have liked to have been able to share 'the One'. 
No need to be peeling a ton of green ones at the moment, though. Everything is ripening up & it's red ones all the way! First wodge of the tomato glut went into the cauldron for a Smoky Tomato Chutney. I seem to have been preserving for ever, but the alchemy of it never fails to amaze me...........
You start with this......

.......you simmer it for precisely as long as it takes (no messing about with sugar thermometers & 'setting points' here!) & it turns into this........

..........all ready to be dolloped onto bacon sarnies, sausage cobs, autumn BBQs, whatever you fancy. Everyone seems to like this one. Some people (you know who you are.......I'm kind of thinking around 120 miles down the A1.......) seem almost ridiculously excited to be given a jar...................which is just as well, as if the tomatoes continue ripening at this rate, I may have to make another batch!

Will doubtless be filling more jars next time........when I also have a photo to share of Albert Whiskers being spectacularly unhelpful. Zero change there, then!
Enjoy the last of the Bank Holiday,
C x