Granny's Green Tomato Relish
Saturday, February 25, 2006 at 09:17PM 
I live just a block or two from "Black Bottom". My husband and I made that green tomato recipe one year from his Granny Brady's old recipe. Notice in the background of this picture....we were canning tomatoes that day, but also had a batch of Green Tomato Relish in process, as evidenced by the bag hanging in the background on the eave of the building behind me. That bag contained a lot of green tomatoes that were draining overnight from the cloth bag they were in.... I have more pics of the process, but it might take a little time to locate them.
Here's the recipe for "GRANNY'S RELISH" that has been handed down in my
husband's family:
GRANNY'S GREEN TOMATO RELISH
1 Gallon Green Tomatoes, ground
1/2 Cup Salt
Mix. Let stand 2 hours. Place in cloth bag and let drain over night.
1 Small Head Cabbage
3 Onions
2 Quarts Chopped Apples
2 Small Red Hot Peppers
Grind all together, add drained tomatoes....
3 Pints Vinegar
1 T. Allspice
1 teaspoon Celery Seed
2 lbs. Brown Sugar
1 teaspoon Ground Cloves
1 teaspoon Tumeric
Bring to a boil...Add ground mixture, mix. Bring to boil again.
Seal in pint jars while hot!
-----From the files of Mary Josephine Martin Morris Brady!
Donna Mattingly
This is a bowl full of some of my first crop of Heirloom Tomatoes - harvested from the
vines I planted in my front yard. Nothing compares to the taste and beauty of these old fashioned varieties!
Donna Mattingly
A Black Brandywine Heirloom Tomato grown among the flowers in front of my house on West Main Street in Lebanon. This is one of the most flavorful heirloom varieties - and it's a beauty!
Donna Mattingly
The Green Zebra is one of my favorites, and I will make sure to grow some every year from now on. They are rather small, but they are gorgeous and flavorful and add interesting contrast to any tomato dish. A winner!
Donna Mattingly
Granny Brady, whose Green Tomato Relish recipe appears above, is responsible for making sure a very special heirloom tomato with Marion County connections survives today.
We call it the Duke Shipp tomato.
Granny obtained the seeds of this large pink tasty heirloom tomato from Mr. Shipp - I think in 1933. There is some colorful history around how she obtained them and I think it involved someone in jail. I'm told that Duke had been arrested for public drunkeness...whomever he spent the weekend in jail with happened to have some seeds in his pocket, and he gave some to Duke, who then gave some to Granny Brady.
I doubt she bailed him out, but she was quite a gardener and was on the lookout for all things horticulturally enhancing. (She even used to beat pans together to attract swarms of bees to her property - the first week of May, she was on the lookout! When she got them into her yard, she would call her brother-in-law, Ben Brady, to remove them from her fruit trees to the hives. He did this with no protection whatsoever, and would talk to the bees softly as he retrieved the Queen from the swarm...the rest would gather on his arms and he could take the whole swarm and deposit them in the hives Granny had prepared for them!)
But I digress...
Duke Shipp grew these tomatoes "up on the Ridge" (Scott's Ridge area) years and years ago.
Granny's youngest son, Bobby Brady, has been instrumental in keeping that strain of tomato alive for this generation, and we obtained our Duke Shipp seeds from him last year.
What a great tomato! The plants were gorgeous and the fruits were large and pink and succulent and most all were perfectly formed. Taste is the number one criteria for a good old fashioned heirloom, and the Duke Shipp tomato is a winner!!!
If any of you have saved special seeds down through your family, please email me at snowbird342@alltel.net and maybe I'll trade some of our Duke Shipp seeds for yours!