Make my own food dehydrator

But I got oven dried tomatoes! And they’re fantastic and incredibly flavorful. Can’t wait to chop them up and toss them with pasta and a bit of goat cheese (because goat cheese makes awesome more awesome). I took the oven dried tomatoes and put them in two small containers with olive oil. Will definitely be growing these next year.

I’ll know shortly whether or not this is a success…fingers crossed!

Keep an eye out for a smaller creature that is feeling fat on ripe tomatoes!

That’s right, we lost 3 of the tomatoes that were just about ready to pick to something that felt the need to come to our garden and nibble. Thing only ate 2 and a half! He left a half to mock us with little teeth marks.

We’ve been feeding the birds, so maybe we have some sway with them…I’ll leave word with the sparrows that they’re free to harass any possum or raccoon or bunny they see going after tomatoes. There will be fresh suet in it for them if they’re successful. The good kind!

Point being – no testing materials this week – a lot will probably be ready next week, but that’s not the point!

Alright,we have one done and about 6 tomatoes that will be ready either tomorrow or the next day.

The way this should work is that we’ll lay this on top of the oven racks with tomatoes resting on the cheesecloth (the string is under the cheesecloth as additional support). We’re still debating on how to do the oven temperature. Our oven won’t do 150 – which is supposedly “ideal,” but we’ve also read “ideal” is the convection that we have since the air will circulate better. Our oven is newer and doesn’t go that low (dang food safety!). We can leave the oven on preheat at 170 without circulation or 300 with…how we get around this will decide the success of this goal.

Since I have so many tomatoes planted, I want to dry a few of them. I’m going to oven-dry, so there’s no need to worry about buying an appliance that does one thing when I can simply make my own frames from 1×1” and cheesecloth – as described here in a handy step-by-step guide.

Need to basically check what I have left in cheesecloth and then get some 1×1”s at Lowes and go to town. Oh – and check my staples for the staple gun (last time I checked, I think I had some random pack that didn’t fit my gun at all).