Title: Helen's Dried Tomatoes
Categories: Vegetable Dehydrator
Yield: 1 Servings

For cherry tomatoes, wash 'em, set them on a clean towel. Grab them one by one, hack them in half and set the halves on the drier tray, cut side up. If there's a bit of skin holding the halves together, leave it. You can close the hinge when they dry and it looks nifty in the jar. Dry until they are thoroughly dry. They'll darken, but they shouldn't be brown. They should be nearly brittle. None of this "leathery" nonsense. Leathery halves don't keep. Bung them into old peanut butter jars, old jelly jars, any jar that has a built-in rubbery seal in the lid. Except pickle jars. The smell never really leaves a pickle jar lid. Poke a pinhole in the lid slap a vacuum sealer strip on the hole, and pump the air out with the vacuum sealer hand pump. Don't recall the brand name of the one I use, but it is advertised in a lot of gardening magazines, costs about $30, and works like a dream, needing no noisy electric motor. The Harvest Maid's fan is noisy enough, eh?

For Roma, or other paste tomatoes, I quarter them to speed drying. Don't peel or seed them, either.

For fun, I slice large salad tomatoes and dry them (dry REALLY fast). I use a V-slice mandoline (made by Boerner, I think) to slice them 1/4inch thick. I don't peel or seed, as this is a fun snack, or something to put on pizza. Eric always wants these. he calls them Tomato Chips. They tend to stick to the trays, though and be hard to pop off intact. Try the screen that comes with the machine, though that only means one tray worth of slices. Do NOT coat the tray or the screen with Pam or oil! The tray will start to disintegrate if contaminated by oils. Only the inside of the fruit-leather tray liner can be coated safely.

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