Garden Explosion!

Like a lot of you I'm sure, we're up to our ears in garden produce!  We've already done a few batches of salsa and spaghetti sauce with our tomatoes and still have so many more coming on. We love it but are sort of running out of things to do with them (as well as space in our cupboards!).  We've also had an abundance of these tiny spicy peppers.  We've thrown them in salsa and used them here and there but we really are not using them up and Doug didn't want to see them wasted.  He decided to dry them and then ground them into powder to use later.  He's so smart.  Here he has all the peppers ready for the dehydrator

and here's the final product.  We're excited to incorporate this into some of our cooking.  It's definitely potent so we'll have to see how it goes.  We were seriously choking on just the tiny amount of powder floating around in the room when he was grinding it!  Want some Liza?

Now onto the tomatoes. My mom reminded me that she likes to dry her tomatoes.  I decided to give that method as well.  You just slice them and place them on the dehydrator sheets.  Once they're dry you stick them in plastic baggies (or jars) and they're ready to use all year.  I'm planning to put them in soups or pasta dishes (kind of like sun dried tomatoes).

I also decided to give this recipe a try (http://www.ourbestbites.com/2008/10/oven-roasted-tomatoes/).  Here's what mine looked like after sitting in the oven for about 3 1/2 hours.  I did this the other day and then I put them in the food processor to make kind of a sauce.  The best is that the recipe includes sprinkling them with salt, pepper and garlic.  I love that because it's already seasoned so it makes the perfect pasta sauce!  They used Roma tomatoes to get more of a paste but I used regular tomatoes that have more water content so it was a little more saucy but that's ok with me!

I made this recipe again today but decided to put it though my tomato strainer instead of the processor.  The processor made it more chunky (which is fine if you like that) and the strainer made it more smooth and took out all the seeds and junk that you can see on the right.  I think I like the smoother sauce better.  Either way they're both tasty!  I put the sauce in quart freezer bags (I'm sure you could process it in glass jars too) and am excited to use it during the winter!

 Here's a random shot of the girls enjoying lunch today in a little "nest" Lilly built for them.