Sadly, here on the west coast of Ohio, vine-ripened tomatoes are now history -- at least for this year.

It's now time for fried green tomatoes.

And Piccalilli -- that wonderful green tomato relish of chopped vegetables and spices with tart taste and crunchy texture.

Never one to be happy with doing things the traditional way more than once, this year I adapted the Piccalilli recipe from my The Everything Diabetes Cookbook and used Sucanat® (evaporated cane sugar juice) instead of cane sugar. The Sucanat® imparts a mild brown sugary-type flavor.

For the pictured version of Piccalilli I doubled the amount of sugar called for in the recipe and used 1 1/2 cups of Sucanat®. This did make for a sweeter relish, but not overly sweet.

For this batch, I used two (peeled and seeded) cucumbers, 4 green tomatoes, a cup of grated cabbage, 1 red pepper, 1 green pepper, and 1 large sweet yellow onion.

For more information (and suggestions on how to make a low-carb version of this relish), see the original Piccalilli recipe.