Tomatoes too many to eat, not enough to can…

So I just got enough tomatoes to be in a weird place of having too many and not enough.

So I made a tomato salad every week from my ripe tomatoes. It was good, and didn’t make a dent in to my tomatoes that were ready and ripe the next week. I was baking one day, and I found on my new oven the proofing mode. It is to get a nice rise out of a yeast dough. But I didn’t realize my oven went so low. 105 to 110 degrees.

With that low of a constant temperature, I was like “Sweet, I can oven dry things now, without them burning the sugars inside the fruits or veggies!” That happens at about 150 to 175 degrees. So I cut up all my tomatoes that I could not use, and it was enough to fill 3 cookie sheets. I then placed them in a oven in the morning at 7a.m., and around noon the looked like this.

Not great looking I know, but I gave them another 8 hours and then they looked like this

All dried, hard, and filled with amazing flavor!

I was able to fill to the brim a 24oz mason jar. That was a great Victory for today!

If you would like another example check out this!

I did the same thing with apples and the results where amazing!

I sliced them thin an actually hung them right on the oven rack for great circulation.

Then put them into a jar too. I was happy because dried apples are pricey to buy in stores. I also can feel great in knowing where they come from since I picked the apples! My kids and my husband love them for a quick, healthy snack. Double victory!