Shrimp and Grits and Green Tomato Gravy

Do you hear that southern twang in the title? Can you believe that I, a non-southern belle, made a dish from the South?  Recently I took a vacation with girlfriends in Charleston, South Carolina and every night John asked me if I was going to come back and make him shrimp and grits with green tomato gravy.   Considering I don't eat shrimp and I only tolerate grits to be nice, the answer has always been NO.
Not, I'll think about it
Not maybe tomorrow
But NO

He finally wore me down and when we had company (who only eats hamburgers and no veggies at all) I decided to make the recipe and earn good girlfriend points. Scouring the internet for green tomato gravy was challenging. There's lots of tomato sauce or salsa recipes or fried green tomato but green tomato gravy wasn't easy to come by. Finally I found from  cdkitchen a recipe

Green Tomato Gravy
2 baseball size green tomatoes - coarsely chopped
1/4 cup garlic, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
3 tablespoons butter
2 cups of chicken broth
Emeril's Essence - to taste
sugar- to taste
cornstarch mixed with a little broth - to thicken

Directions:
Saute onion in 1 tbsp butter until soft. Add garlic and 1 tbsp of butter and saute 1 min. Add tomatoes and remaining butter and saute about 3 minutes. Add all ingredients except for cornstarch mixture and simmer until soft, but not mushy. Add cornstarch to thicken.

Notice the first ingredient in the list...green tomato.  When I go to the grocery store I have only ever seen red tomato's. I have never once seen green tomato's so I turned to two gardening women at work. The first lady told me I meant tomatillo's, that those were green. No, I assured her I mean green tomatoes. The second lady had unripe tomato's on her plant and brought me two.

The next challenge was the shrimp for which I headed to Costco. In the frozen section was a gigantic bag of shrimp, which wouldn't work. A special event had prawns sitting on ice and I eyeballed them skeptically. Are they devined?  How do you take off the shells?  The lady showed me and I told her I would buy them if she gave me a pair of gloves too.  Truly disgusted with my purchase, I headed out with 8 prawns sitting in ice in a plastic bag.

With knife in hand and two green tomatoes on a cutting board John asked me what I was doing.  What am I doing? What have you been nagging for? Prepare to be impressed I replied and showed him the shelled shrimp where earlier in the day I had squimishly pulled the shells with the little legs off and took the garbage straight outside.

I managed to cook the meal AND the shrimp successfully and when John said it was good, I knew that I had earned DOUBLE good girlfriend points and I should NEVER have to cook again (hopeful wishing).