What to do with ALL OF THE TOMATOES!!

Ok, so we bought four tomato plants, two of them actually lived, and of course neither living plant was the Roma or the cherry.  (Romas are my favorite, and I have an awesome recipe for stuffed cherry tomatoes that I wanted to make.)  That means that I now have tons and tons of tomatoes that fall into the “other” category.  For some reason, a lot of the tomatoes on one of the plants have turned black on the top and started cracking.  I think it’s because of all the rain we’ve gotten recently.  Fortunately, the other plant seems to be fine.  More than fine.  Prolific.  Exuberant.  Crazy!

So here’s what I did.  I decided to oven dry them.  I dried two huge trays of them, and then proceeded to eat all of them like candy.  I guess it could have been worse, they could have been actual candy.  I swear, I can’t resist them!  They’re really sweet, and kind of chewy.  They have this amazing concentrated tomato flavor, and I just sit and eat them like popcorn or something.  I probably ate a dozen tomatoes worth before they were even off the tray.  It’s probably shameful, but if it’s wrong I don’t wanna be right!  (And the best part is, they pretty much count as 0 ww points!)

Here’s how you do it-

Wash your tomatoes, cut them into 8ths, run your finger through the sides of the slices to get rid of the liquid and seeds, and cut off the bits of core stuck to the top of the wedges.

Put them on a foil-lined baking sheet that you’ve oiled with about two tablespoons of olive oil.  Lightly sprinkle with salt.  (You can also throw some dried basil on them if you’d like.  I didn’t this time.)

Put the trays in a 275 oven, and leave them for an hour.  After the hour, come back and shake them to loosen any that are sticking.  Put them back in the oven and let them continue to dry.  Eventually, you can flip them over if you’d like.

I’d say it takes at least two hours, depending on how big and juicy your tomatoes were to begin with.  They dehydrate down to little bite sized pieces that you won’t be able to resist.

tomatoes (before)

tomatoes (during)

tomatoes (after)