The traditional turkey and pumpkin pie will soon have a new companion on my Thanksgiving table: green tomatoes.

This fall has not been warm, to say the least, but it hasn’t been freezing, either. In very-late October, I took a last spin through the garden, harvesting tomatoes and peppers that were still clinging to the vines. Nights grew chilly and days grew cool, too. A spat of temperatures in the high 50’s in early November was a boon to the garden. And even though the surrounding suburbs had below-freezing weather, Boston proper has stayed frost-free, thanks to all the brick and pavement, I suppose.

What these weather conditions have brought us community gardeners is a bounty of late-season produce. What was supposed to be my official end-of-season garden cleanup just a few days before Thanksgiving turned into the biggest cherry tomato harvest of the season. I must have brought home five pounds of green and orangey cherry tomatoes.

Well, what do I do with such a large harvest of small tomatoes? Only the Littles could slice and fry green tomatoes this size. So, I turned to my favorite online recipe resource, FoodNetwork.com. A search for “green tomato” brought a bunch of the usual suspects. But hidden among the fried tomato recipes were two gems.

The first was so off the wall I just had to try it: Green Tomato Cake. Okay, remove whatever image you have in your head—it’s not what you think. Green Tomato Cake, which calls for 2 cups of diced green tomatoes, is more of a spice cake than anything. If you’ve ever had an apple spice cake baked in a bundt pan, you have an idea of what this cake is like.

The dominant flavors of Green Tomato Cake are cinnamon and nutmeg, and there’s nothing at all wrong with that. And as such, it’s actually the perfect addition to the Thanksgiving table. It’s quite delicious and I’m recommending it to all my gardening friends. Be forewarned, though; it’s a Paula Dean recipe. It has two sticks of butter in it, and there’s no need to add the Brown Butter Icing.

We swing from the sweet to the savory with the second recipe: Hot and Spicy Green Tomato Soup. This, my friends, is definitely something that can warm you up on a chilly fall night. With a pound of chopped green tomatoes and the addition of two or three different types of spicy peppers, it has all of the BAM! characteristic of an Emeril Lagasse recipe. Keep a glass of milk nearby, or add a dollop of sour cream to the bowl to cool down the heat if your taste buds are on the mild side.

Is it appropriate for the Thanksgiving table? Maybe not, but it would be a nice accompaniment to a leftover turkey sandwich.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. And let’s raise a glass to new holiday traditions.