When our garden is producing extremely well I like to preserve as much as I can from it. Oftentimes our tomatoes are producing like GANGBUSTERS and I’m making Tomato Sauce and Pasta Sauce from it Sometimes I dehydrate them into Tomato Powder or just Dried Diced Tomatoes to drop into my wintertime simmering soups.
But one of my favorite ways to preserve tomatoes is by dehydrating it into tomato leather. That way I can roll it out directly on top of my pizza crust & just start piling on the toppings. The cooking process and the moisture in the toppings rehydrates the leather for me.
But I didn’t get many tomatoes this year so I find myself purchasing pasta sauce until I can make it myself again. (sigh…) But recently I had leftover pasta sauce and wondered what to do with it. Since we’ve recently discovered tortilla pizzas I decided to make some tortilla-sized tomato leather!
Did you know you can make a sweet gummy-style chewy candy using excess garden squash? It’s TRUE! Making the candy is simple & we loved the cherry flavor.
I love fresh spinach, and I love that during early spring it produces so prolifically. We like to eat as much spinach as we can while it’s fresh and crisp but I also want to preserve that delicious, healthy spinach to enjoy later in the season – way after the plants have bolted and are gone. I experimented with dehydrating fresh spinach this year and I loved the results. I wrote this piece for one of my favorite publications, Mother Earth News. C’mon y’all – check it out!
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OK by now y’all know I’m a dehydrating fool! I bought my dream appliance, an *Excalibur 9-tray dehydrator and I think I’m in love!
I’ve put that thing through the paces, dehydrating all kinds of fruits and veggies. And I’ve even made Italian-flavored tomato leather to just roll out and plop on my homemade French-Bread Pizza. No rehydration needed! I think it’s safe to say I’ve been bitten by the dehydrating bug.
I use many dehydrated veggies in my wintertime simmering Endless Soup. And I use most of my dehydrated fruits as replacement for raisins in my Homemade Pumpkin Granola.
But I’ve also been dehydrating veggies to grind and use for my own homemade powdered seasoning. I hate to pull out a large dehydrator to dehydrate such small portions, and it almost seems even my other small household model is a bit much.
Check out today’s Homestead Hack. I’ve found a way to quickly dehydrate small amounts of food for FREE!
RancherMan loves crispy dehydrated apple slices topped with cinnamon sugar. I dry them in the dehydrator and then a quick stint in the oven to make them crisp. Check it out!
Gardening is a fun hobby, but c’mon there’s lots of work involved too. From planting seeds or tender seedlings to standing under that hot summer sun watering, weeding and harvesting.
Seeing that basket of fresh healthy produce is enough to make it all worthwhile of course. But oftentimes your harvest comes all at once as feast or famine. After putting in all of that tender loving care to your precious garden it’s important to make sure none of your hard works goes to waste.
For instance I harvested my onions when their growing time was up. But how to make sure a whole garden full of onions can be enjoyed instead of being sat aside deteriorating until they’re only compost worthy? You can bet your hat I won’t be letting my hard work go to waste!
I was dehydrating lots of vegetables from my garden. Each one was placed in a repurposed glass jar in my pantry. Then I decided to assemble various dry veggies, add some seasoning and make dehydrated salsa in a jar as a gift. The gift recipients LOVED IT!
