Ripe tomato pickle

Hadn't really planned on doing a tomato pickle marathon today, but when it looked like we had a bunch of tomatoes ripe, it seemed like a good idea. This is an old recipe that I got from my Great Aunt Bernice. She was known for her tomato relish. She used to give jars of it away at Christmas. I knew it was good, but really didn't appreciate how special it was until I started making my own. It is the most time consuming thing that I put up. Her recipe was one of those that didn't tell exact amounts of the ingredients. Like add vinegar and sugar to taste sharp, but sweet. Huh? I like to have exact measurements when I do stuff like this. Of course, I am pretty sure I have never made any that would hold a light to hers.

Here are most of what goes into it. I don't have the sugar or salt in the pic.

I use a mixture of 1 Quart chopped tomatoes, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 cider vinegar, and 1 tsp salt. Then I added peppers and onions (5-6 onions and 5 peppers chopped) If you like more peppers and onions that would be fine. We just used all the peppers Tommy could find this morning. Tommy chopped up the onions and peppers while I peeled the tomatoes. I ended up with 8 quarts of tomatoes. I had to use 3 pots to start out. I start out cooking them on pretty high heat at first. Then after 3 hours of cooking and stirring-you have to pretty much stay chained to the stove :0)
Then I had to slow it down a bit to keep it from sticking. Cooked it another hour or so and then put it in jars and in the canner to process them. From 8 quarts of tomatoes+all the other ingredients, I got a little over 9 pints of pickle. Had a little leftover to eat tonight on our fried okra.  As my 3 year old grandson, Joseph, would say-"This tastes"

Here are some pics during the process

Here's what I started out with

After 3 hours I got it down to 2  pots

Now it is cooked down and shiny

And here is what I ended up with after 7 hours!