In The Kitchen - Sun Dried Tomatoes

Oven Dried Tomatoes really, but Sun Dried just sounds so much better in the title.

I am the gardener of our DIY duo.  I purchase seed and plants.  I build beds, mix soil, plant, prune and weed.  M waters.  I have time, he doesn't. 

This year I couldn't garden.  So we weren't going to have one.  M couldn't stand that.  So he bought tomato and pepper plants.  He built arbors so we could plant upside down tomatoes.

I could only show you this end because the rest of the buckets
don't match.   I'm not ocd about symmetry and matching at all.
I'm not.  Really.
But I've recently discovered plastic paint so next year.....

He moved a couple of my raised beds up The Hill from the garden at the Little Old House

I seem to have only taken pictures of my old garden when it
had snow on it!  It was a pretty spot, right above the spring.

to plant our peppers in.

The netting is to keep these neighbors from
eating the plant down to a bare stem.

I did plant the tomatoes in their buckets.  I sat in a chair with the bucket sitting on 2 other buckets in front of me.  I mixed the soil and planted upside down tomatoes from a sitting position. With my leg sticking out at a real awkward angle.  It was not the easiest way to plant that I've tried.  

As mentioned before I usually purchase the plants.  I prefer heirloom tomatoes.  I like to order them and have them delivered; early.  I actually had an order ready when I fell and for once was glad that I had procrastinated and not actully ordered 40 or so tomato plants to be delivered at the beginning of May.  This is why M doesn't have a clue as to what kind of tomatoes to buy though.  He went to our Co-Op and bought the only heirloom tomatoes he saw.  They were all small to medium varieties.  Not cherry tomatoes just small tomatoes.

They've produced well; ripening a few at a time.  Not fast enough to can or freeze but too fast to eat all of them before the next batch ripens.

What do you do with a bowl tomatoes

that are small enough to fit in a teaspoon.

And exactly who wants to peel tomatoes that small anyway? Not me.  So after hearing me whine talk about all these pretty little tomatoes, Rae suggested drying them.

So I googled  how to oven dry tomatoes and found at least 20 different how tos.  I read them all.  Then combined what I had read and did it my way.

First I cut them in halves and laid them on paper towels to drain for an hour.

Then placed them on an oiled cookie sheet, sprinkled them with sea salt and put them in a 250 degree oven.

For about 6 hours. After about 4 hours I started checking them and taking out the ones that looked like they were dry enough.  I ended up with wrinkled and shriveled bits of little tomatoes.

But Good Golly Miss Molly!

These funny looking little things absolutely burst with flavor, kind of like chewy sunshine in a bowl.

This is the best thing I've done to preserve tomatoes.  Ever!  I've already dried 4 batches.  AND we have a few hundred of these beauties still hanging around out there.

The aforementioned Miss Molly is one of our 4 remaining canine girls.  She started out as our dog.  When J moved back to the farm she let us know real quick that he was her person.  When he moved into his Little Barn House she moved right with him.  Without even a backwards glance at us.  She goes everywhere with J that he will let her go.  Today he took her into town to run at one of the parks in town.  As he has done before.  When he came home he told me it was a sad day.  Molly started off with him as usual but very quickly gave up and went to the van to take a nap.  She turned 9 last month and she's really been slowing down a lot.  I told her she just needs to move back in with me now.  She'd fit right in with me and the turtle.