The Harvest's Bounty

Here's the bounty of our harvest as of the middle of August. Well, I know it's not that much of a bounty, but over the weeks we continually get about this much every few days. I'm very proud of this, mostly because the grasshoppers have taken residence in our garden and those little buggers are eating up our hard work. They are tricky and quick which makes it all the more frustrating when I'm yelling at them.

These beautiful tomatoes were calling for me to keep them preserved somehow, someway and I love to keep summer flavor...so off to research I go.

While researching I gently covered my precious tomatoes. I wasn't sure how we were going to dry and by the power of the internet, I found three different ways - over, dehydrator, and car. We have a borrowed dehydrator with no manual so I was leary to do that and I wasn't too sure about the consistency of the dashboard of the car so I decided to try the oven method....and I left them in too long.

Then my heart broke when I saw the crispy, dark red "chips" sitting on the cookie sheet instead of summer flavors preserved in the Italian red color I was expecting. Ouch, ouch, ouch. They tasted terrible! So now what?

Ken and I babysat the dehydrator one afternoon and checked those tomatoes like they were turning into gold. I'm going to leave you hanging and will post the pretty, red tomatoes on the next post.

p.s. they turned out great!!!