Dehydrating Tomatoes

Just spent about fifteen minutes prepping my tomatoes and filling my dehydrator.

Could have made sauce, but, well....I just wasn't feeling Saucy if you know what I mean.  This was two weeks worth of tomatoes from my co-op basket that I pick up weekly and I will receive another basket on Wednesday .....so these tomatoes needed a home, whether it be in my belly or in my freezer.

Cue my dehydrator,  ...deep in the depths of laundry room storage.  It is circa 1990; a hand-me-down from my mother.  I think I probably used it in college sometime when she first brought it out of her storage into mine.  Here is sits next to the ice-cream maker last used at my first birthday party.  Yes.  MY first.

This laundry room by the way is a work in progress.  364 days ago it looked like this:

And I'll tell ya, ...today it doesn't look much better.  Always a process right?  I digress...

So, back to the tomatoes.  First I "blanched" them.  I dipped them in boiled water, and then into ice water.

This makes the peeling process much easier.  Cut an X in the tomato skin and it will peel very easily.

The instructions say to cut it in pieces or in halves.  With the dehydrator shelves on their highest setting, halves still would have been too big.

I had a couple extra shelves left and decided to add my two eggplants.  I was hoping to make this open faced eggplant and cheese sandwich but it hasn't happened yet and the eggplants are READY.  My husband has a fear of eggplants so these need to be snuck into food discreetly or eating while he is out of the house.

The eggplants needed to be peeled and sliced.

I'm leaving the vent on the top of the dehydrator open as suggested by the instruction manual.  Although it says 20 hours, I'm expecting it to take longer due to the high humidity of tomatoes and my high altitude of 5600 feet.  When finished, I'll probably bag them and plop them in the freezer, even though the instructions say they should be fine in a dark place.  My sister suggested I dehydrate my tomatoes and says she uses them in soups and pestos.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Here's a couple pictures of the instructions for dehydrating and rehydrating tomatoes and eggplant:

...Only 19 hours to go.

UPDATE @ bottom of post 9-23-10