Garden Bounty

Sooo... we had a bounteous harvest in the garden and... we have a LOT of tomatoes to process!

And lots and lots of Sungold cherry tomatoes... sooo yummy... we call them garden candy. But too many for us to eat.

And we only have so much freezer space sooo...

Welcome to the new dehydrator!!! A 10 tray dehydrator... to help with preserving the harvest.

Ooohhh... ahhh...

Let's start... first we chop the cherry tomato in half and place it on the tray... with 3/4" inch between pieces... Rinse and Repeat...

Whew... there's one tray... only four more to go. Ugh!

As for the larger ones... take out the stalk bit... score the bottom with an "x"...

Blanch for a minute in the double boiler...

Scoop out into a cold water bath...

Deskin them...

And then cut into slices...

While the dehydrator is dehydrating... I am making a beet/potato salad from our beets and our potatoes... yum!

Beets take longer to cook...

But finally they are done and we can dice them...

Mix beets, potatoes and some diced onions with a mixture of oil, vinegar and mustard and let stew on the counter for a few hours...

Add mayonnaise and chill... yum!

Hours (and hours) later... we have dried tomatoes!!!

It took a bit longer than we thought... 12 hours in total... but now we have sundried tomatoes for cooking with...

No rest for the dehydrator... we have Italian plums from our tree and we are going to freeze some and dehydrate the rest...

Cut in half, depit them and then slice the halves in half again...

Place on rack and...

Slide into dehydrator.

And... eight hours later we have some yummy dried plums. Cool! We can also dry herbs with this thing... nice!