I made pickles earlier this season, I've blanched and frozen pea pods and greens. Now for something new! Dehydrating!
My mother-in-law gave me her food dehydrator a couple of years ago. Now this isn't some little rinky-dink plastic dome thing, this is a cabinet with loads of trays. I kept telling myself to use it, but I hadn't , now, finally, it is seeing some use.
The cherry and currant tomato bonanza is going on in the garden. I picked only the ones that were hanging on the wrong side of the fence, which still left me with a 9 x 12 tray filled with tomatoes.
Tomatoes are really photogenic, I took lots of pictures.
I googled how to dehydrate them and miraculously all the people posting agreed on most points, which are--slice them in half, place them in the dehydrator on a low setting, check on them and in 10-16 hours (depending on the dehydrator and how low it is set), and voila dehydrated tomatoes.
So, I sliced them in half.
All several hundred of them. It took a long time to slice them in half. I could have left them whole, but they would have taken several days in the dehydrator. I don't think it is energy star compliant, so to save the electric bill, they were sliced, and sliced, and sliced.
And loaded them into the dehydrator. I added a layer of peppers, because I still had space.
I had seven trays of tomatoes and one of peppers.
I checked on them this morning and they looked like this:
They are very tasty! I love it when it works!
Bottled up, five trays of red cherry and currant tomatoes look like this:
It seems the secret to telling if the tomatoes are ready is to put a few of them straight from the tray into a jar, if it fogs up they are not ready. The only cloudiness I have on these jars is mineral deposits from our well water.
The yellow ones are taking a bit longer, they were much larger. They are still in the dehydrator. I tested them, they taste good too!
Now for all of the tomatoes that are inside the fence, this could be days of work.
This is slooooooooooooow food.
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