Harvest Time & Rainbow Chili

A few weeks ago the kids and I got carried away picking ripe tomatoes in my father's garden. The biggest, mutant looking tomatoes were ones that we had actually grown from seed (our first attempt). I really didn't think we'd see any tomatoes, especially after Andrew found the seed tray and was flinging the dirt out of it. We still ended up with more than a dozen plants, which we took to Papa's house to plant. What to do with so many tomatoes? I tried freezing them. It was actually very therapeutic to peel tomatoes after lots of studying. It was a bit messy, but not too hard to do. Now I have 2 big freezer bags full of skinned tomatoes, and 2 big bags of whole Roma tomotoes - way too many of them to peel them all!

I even made my own chili from scratch the other day. Once I convinced the kids to try it, everyone loved it! I call it Rainbow Chili (yes, I'm a bit cheesey!):

Rainbow Chili

1 lb. ground turkey, browned
2 small or 1 large green pepper, chopped
1 banana pepper (or another green pepper), chopped
2 heaping spoonfuls of dried onions (or chop up a fresh one - I can't bear to!)

-add the last 3 to the turkey while it's about half way done browning

3 tomatoes, chopped
2 cans black beans, drained
1 can whole kernel corn, drained
1 tbsp. chili powder (more if you like it hot!, this is mild)
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 cans tomato soup
1 can diced tomatoes (1 lb. 12 oz. size) - or chop more fresh tomatoes

Mix everything together in a large crock pot and cook on low for 6-8 hours. Yields enough to serve a family of four all week long. Next time, I think I'll freeze half of it. Though it was good on hot dogs and fries, too...

Enjoy!