Mexican Chili and Green Tomato Advice

I had a pretty good day yesterday. The kids were well behaved, my headache I'd been fighting for two days finally went away, and I was able to get quite a bit accomplished, including making my Mexican Chili.

When we got back from Vegas there was a LARGE box of tomatoes (both green and red) sitting in front of our door. My first thought was, "YEAH!! I LOVE fresh tomatoes." My next thought was, "What am I going to do with all of these tomatoes?" The first night home I made green fried tomatoes, I remember having them in Tennessee when we lived there. Kind of a big deal in the south. My green fried tomatoes turned out all right. I did a healthier version of them. However, I still had about a million tomatoes to use up. So, yesterday my plan was to use up as many as possible in my Mexican Soup/Chili. Whatever you want to call it. I've eaten this meal in various forms, but never with FRESH tomatoes, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Tralee and I set up our work station, and together we blanched the tomatoes so we could peel the skin easily. Tralee liked to take the big spoon and put the tomatoes into the hot water, then use the spoon to take them out and put them in the freezing water. She got a big kick out of it. She lost interest when it came time to peel the skin off. After the tomatoes were peeled, I cut and squished them, set them aside and moved onto spinach.

Spinach in Mexican chili? You wonder. Yes, we're trying to eat much healthier at our house. So, I sauteed a bag of spinach, pureed it, and added about half a cup into the chili. The rest of it went into the freezer for later use.

The next step was putting it all together. First I sauteed fresh garlic and onions in a little olive oil, added and browned some ground turkey, as well as flax seed meal. Then I added the taco seasoning, dumped the canned stuff in (beans -- I used black, white, and chili beans, but usually use whatever I have on hand--, chili peppers, corn, etc), added the spinach and tomatoes, some lime juice, and let it all simmer. Towards the end I added some cilantro, I LOVE fresh cilantro. And TA-DAH, my soup was done! Usually I just add canned tomatoes to this dish, but since I had all the fresh ones on hand, I wanted to use them up. I used both green and red. The green tomatoes added a little extra zing. I liked it.

How do you serve your Mexican Chili? We eat ours with some shredded cheese, sour cream, and tortilla chips on top.

So there you go. You probably didn't care to read about me cooking, but I always like to hear how people cook things, because sometimes I pick up an idea or tip I never thought of.

I still have quite a few green tomatoes to use up. Does anyone have any green tomato recipes or ideas for me? I would really appreciate some tips.