It’s Drying Time Again

Well, it’s that time of the year. The tomatoes are really starting to ripen so I’ve got the dehydrator going. For information on our dehydrator see this post. As I mentioned there, I sure wish I would have bought the larger tray version instead of just five trays. It’s fine for right now, but it won’t be long and there will be tomatoes waiting in line to dry.

Tomatoes Waiting To Be Dried

This was my first bunch of the season to dry – Sweet Baby Girls and Sungolds. Sungolds are one of my favorite eating tomatoes but looks like we will have a surplus this year so they also will be dried.

Tomatoes on drying rack

I cut even the small tomatoes in half. It just makes for quicker drying time.

Tomatoes ready to be dried

I’d show you a picture of them dried, but they aren’t quite done. After drying them, they are vacuum sealed and then tossed in the freezer. However, they can just be put in a ziploc bag and stored in the pantry. We dry so many that they just keep fresher this way. We still have one bag in the freezer from last season.

If you love tomatoes you would love them dried. We use them all winter long in salads, soup, burgers, frittatas and just eating out of the bag.

Meanwhile, I’ve been harvesting our blueberries every day. So far, I’ve harvested over 7 lbs of these blue beauties. If you come to our kitchen during blueberry season you’ll see this on our counter.

Every morning after harvesting, I spread them out on a towel on the kitchen counter. Some mornings I might pick some that are not quite ripe. By the next day they are all ripe and ready for the morning smoothie or the freezer.

What a wonderful time of the year when all of the goodies are coming into the kitchen. Ain’t nothing like homegrown.