Life of Wry

So far this season, I’ve figured out roasting and sause-ing (thanks to friends who roast and sauce). Next stop on the tomato tour for this rookie tomato grower was dehydrating!

For this adventure, I took the advice of life long family friend, Lauren, who is truly the master of so, so many trades. She said, “get a dehydrator!,” so, of course, I did.

Here was the latest (and near last) batch of Early Girls, washed, cored and sliced…

…. into 3/4″ thick slices:

So red, juicy and flavorful!! Almost hated the idea of sucking all that goodness out. But.. proceeded gamely…

Next step was to place them on layered trays (I had enough for three full traysworth):

This thing is quite noisy, so I banished it to the laundry-pantry room (we still don’t have a name for this multipurpose heaven of a new space)…..

….where it motored (loudly) for about 11 hours.

I finally had to go to bed, so decided they were done and took them out and put them on a paper towel:

I just took a better pic of them:

These came out cruchy, well overdone, but FANTASTIC if you like tomato chips!

And the others were actually underdone, remaining a bit soft, so I decided those would be good stored in a jar with some olive oil and garlic…

Undoubtedly, there is a trick to this dehydrating business, but I’m sure I’ll get it down. I am totally ready for Tomato Season 2022! I am certain next year we will throw out not a SINGLE tomato.