What To Do With Green Tomatoes

By Phran Novelli

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - So, what do you do with green tomatoes? You could end up with quite a few this year, because after our rainy start to summer, lots of tomato plants seemed to spring back and start making fruit when it got sunny later on in the summer and into the fall.

Since tomatoes don't need sun but rather darkness to ripen, one easy idea is to pull the entire plant out of the soil and hang it in a garage or basement.

Then there's the paper bag method. Since they do seem to ripen better on the vine, I've already cut several sections of vine with lots of cherry tomatoes on them and put them in a brown bag - adding an apple helps to speed up the ripening process. That's working pretty well, and that's about as much work as I'm willing to do for green tomatoes.

Some gardeners claim to wrap each tomato in newspaper and layer them in a box - but who has time for that, much less to constantly unwrap them all to tell what's ripe when? Which explains why slicing, breading and frying green tomatoes may be the simplest solution of all.