Category: Using your Harvest

The Easiest Tomato Sauce You Will Ever Make

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Do you have end-of-the-season tomatoes languishing on the counter like I do? This is the perfect way to use them up, and save them from going into the compost. The method also works well during the summer when you have a glut of tomatoes that are on the verge of going bad and you need to use them up quickly, without hassling around with skinning them and canning them. Because of all the additions, this is not a sauce you want to can, but it freezes beautifully.

Cut the yucky off, and the bottom will be perfect

Let’s face it; those last minute tomatoes are not really very appetizing. They might have been through a freezing night or two. You collected them even though they were green and hard, hoping that they’d ripen to a somewhat tasty tomato, but the chances are slim. Once they have ripened a bit inside, they may taste a somewhat like a store bought tomato, or even less flavorful…but they will never be a luscious, juicy beauty queen like all those tomatoes that came in all summer long.

A couple apples in a bag full of end-of-season tomatoes…

In hopes they will ripen up a bit!

This method will transform those sad tomatoes!

Sorting out the red from the hopelessly green, from my paper bag

Hoping for at least 6 pounds of relatively ripe tomatoes.

I have thrown a couple yellowy and green ones in before, no prob!

The sauce is multipurpose; I like to use it in mid-winter pots of chili, mix it with spaghetti sauce for a flavor boost, and add basil and garlic for a tasty pizza sauce.

If you have a lot of green tomatoes coming into the house, use the paper bag and apple trick to ripen them up a bit. Some of the tomatoes may have bumps and bruises and holes, and for this sauce, that is perfectly acceptable.

After you have a good amount of ripened tomatoes, chop them up, cutting out any bad spots. Throw them all in a roasting pan.

Method #1, see below

Method #2, see below

There are two different methods to follow from this point on; the carefree, anything goes method I learned from Spring Warren in this book, or the specific instructions described by Joan Gussow in this book. Both of these women are heroes of mine, and I own their books, referring to them often.

The second recipe will blow your socks off, and become a sauce that can totally stand on its own, but I go to the first recipe when I don’t wanna mess with measuring. Both sauces are handy; however, I label them on their own, specifying YUM to indicate that it can go directly into our supper rather than as an addition (for example, I will put the plain glut sauce into chili along with equal amounts regular tomato sauce, or into pasta with equal amounts pre-made pasta sauce). I also call this YUM sauce because while it roasts, your kitchen will become filled with the most delicious aroma you’ve ever inhaled. Even the kids agree on this. I can’t think of a better way to end the year’s tomatoes; a fragrant, happy goodbye that fills the house!

Future pasta dishes and chili, yay!

1. Carefree Tomato Glut Sauce

Fill your roasting pan with 2/3 tomatoes and 1/3 other stuff. Other stuff can be peppers, eggplant, onion, garlic, fresh herbs, pears, plums (the sweet additions give a nice balance of flavor). Roast in a 400 degree oven, stirring every 30 minutes or so, until you have a big pile of mush. Let it cool, then blend the heck out of it. If the veggies lost too much moisture while roasting, add water while blending until you have the consistency you want. Mine always turns out pretty thick.

2. Tomato YUM Glut Sauce -with actual measurements and stuff

(source: adapted from the NY Times and This Organic Life)

Once you’ve tried the recipe, experiment with other veggie additions.

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Put into large roasting pan (I divide everything up into two 9×13 pans):

6 pounds tomatoes (chop them in half to prevent exploding tomatoes)

1 1/2 c. coarsely chopped carrots (optional)

1 1/2 c. coarsely chopped celery

1 1/2 c. coarsely chopped onions (can use green onions)

9 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped

6 T. balsamic vinegar

1 bay leaf (I break it in half to divide it into my two pans)

1 1/2 T. each fresh thyme, oregano, basil, parsley (or 2 t. dried)

1 1/2 t. salt

1 T. pepper (I used 2 t.)

Mix everything up a bit with your hands to evenly distribute the ingredients. Roast for 45 minutes until vegetables are soft. Let cool. Pulse in blender until it reaches consistency you prefer. Recipe says it will make 2 quarts, but when I make it, I get 2 1/2 quarts, which I freeze in 2-cup portions.

Urban Gardening Using your Harvest

Showing the Love for our Puny Potatoes

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Check it out! We harvested our potatoes!

Craig saw the above picture before he saw the actual potatoes. When he saw them in person, he started laughing. “Wow, those are some tiny potatoes. In the pictures they looked bigger, like…real potatoes.” I beg to differ, Mr.! They may all fit in my hand at once, but we are proud of these tiny spuds, and let me tell you why:

1). They are our first attempt ever at growing potatoes.

2). They grew in a pot…yes, a pot!

3). We didn’t even use potato ‘slips’ (pieces of potato with roots roots growing out of, which most gardeners buy especially for planting). We used an old sprouting potato from the pantry (click here to see us planting them).

4). This is just enough potato to make our favorite soup for lunch! (soon we will have our own peas to add to the soup, as well)

Better Than Campbell’s Alphabet Soup-Click Here for recipe!

Having success, even if small, is wonderful for boosting confidence. To the seasoned gardener, our tiny potato harvest may seem silly. However, the excitement we felt uncovering potatoes for the first time was akin to opening Christmas gifts– it was indescribable! We had waited for months, never knowing if something was forming under the soil in our big white pot or not. As we uncovered the brown tubers, we practically squealed. Or maybe that was just me. No, I’m pretty sure at least one of the kids squealed, too. 😉

We all have to start somewhere…and now that we know it is possible to actually get potatoes using a container, we are motivated to try it again next year, perhaps using a bigger container(s), and using actual potato slips. Puny potatoes=huge success, in my eyes!

Using Teamwork to drag our pot of potatoes to the side garden, so we could dump it out

It was quite heavy! But these kids were determined!

Taking a breather before dumping it into our garden bed

The hidden treasures!!! 🙂

We put our treasures into the now empty pot. Hmm, what can we plant in there now? 😉

Using your Harvest

Sugar Pickles

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Otherwise known as Cucumber Salad!

If you have a big cucumber glut like we do, this is a really tasty recipe to use some up. The flavor screams summer. I have memories of eating this stuff that goes way, way back. My Grandma Harber kept cucumber salad in her fridge all summer, and I remember how refreshing it was on a hot and sweaty day.

I enlisted Noah’s help in the peeling. Just a hint; if you decide to give a 4-year-old a vegetable peeler to ‘help’ you with a task, make sure to give him the least appealing cucumber possible. There is a very good chance that said cucumber will end up as a fun science experiment rather than edible food.

It’s all good, though…Noah was amazed when he kept peeling and peeling until he unearthed a stash of seeds. If that’s not hands-on learning, I don’t know what is! Promptly after discovering the seeds, the peeler became a sword and the cucumber a hapless monster needing killed. Ahh. At least the monster slayer had a taste for his kill; Noah began to pick up the peelings and cucumber guts and ate them, joyfully. Since these are home grown, organic cucumbers, I have no qualms about him eating all the peels he wants.

When we had finished with the peeling, I used a mandolin (quite possibly the most terrifying tool in the kitchen; adults only, please!) to slice them very thinly. We threw the rest of the ingredients together, and let the ‘pickles’ soak until the next day.

At lunch the next day, 4 out of 5 kids tried the cucumbers, and liked them enough for seconds and thirds! On a whim, I called them ‘sugar pickles’ for their subtle sweetness, and the name has stuck around here. I could eat the whole batch myself, they are that refreshing and delicious. You could leave the onions out if you want, but honestly, the kids didn’t even notice them.

Sugar Pickles AKA Cucumber Salad

3 large cucumbers

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup white sugar

1/8 cup water

1/4 cup distilled white vinegar

1/2 teaspoon celery seed (optional)

1/4 cup chopped onion

Peel the cucumbers and slice wafer thin. Sprinkle with salt. Let stand 30 minutes, then squeeze cucumbers to release moisture. In a medium size bowl mix sugar, water, vinegar, celery seed, and onion. Add cucumbers to mixture. Mix well. Refrigerate 1 hour.

Using your Harvest Vegetarian Recipes

Awesome Recipe for the Last Green Beans

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There’s a big kid in the garden! Even my almost 15-year-old gets involved with the garden, and though he finds it a bit uncool to get excited about anything, I think Patrick secretly likes the fact that we try to grow food. I’ve overheard him telling the neighbor kids “You should see all the stuff we have growing on the side of the house, it’s crazy.” I’ll take that as genuine interest. 😉

Neighbor kid watching in the background 🙂

He went out and harvested the very last of our green beans last night. The plants look awful, and we know there will be no more this year. We have so many delicious ways to use our green beans (if they make it into the house without being eaten raw). Here is one of our favorites!

Greek Potato Salad

(so yummy! Goes perfectly with Green Chicken, found HERE)

1 1/4 pounds red potatoes, cut into 1″ cubes

3/4 pound green beans, trimmed and snapped into 1″ pieces

1/4 medium red onion, thinly sliced

1 rib celery, thinly sliced

3 T. olive oil

1 T. lemon juice

1 T. chopped fresh dill (or 1 t. dried)

1 garlic clove, minced

3/4 t. salt

1/4 t. pepper

1. Place the potatoes in a large saucepan with cold water to cover by 2″. Bring to a boil over medium hight heat and cook for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender but still hold their shape. Drain and transfer to a large bowl.

2. Meanwhile, bring a large saucepan of lightly salted water to a boil. Add the green beans, return to a boil and cook for 3 minutes. Drain and rinse under cold water. Transfer to the bowl with the potatoes.

3. Add remaining ingredients and toss well. This can be served warm or at room temperature.

Urban Gardening Using your Harvest

Beefsteaks; Not Just for Slicing!

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This summer, I have mostly focused on our Amish Paste roma tomatoes, but I don’t want anyone to think they are the king of the garden. Though they make great sauce because they contain few seeds and juice–mostly meat–that doesn’t mean you have to disregard your other tomatoes when you are preserving your harvest.

Beefsteaks are known for their wonderful flavor and the way their copious juice dribble down your chin as you eat them, slice by slice. But how many beefsteaks can you really eat before they so bad?

I scored 15 pounds of beefsteaks from Uncle Loren (he is always so willing to share!). He also gave me 3 beefsteak tomato plants earlier in the spring that have been producing like crazy. I knew we wouldn’t eat them all. So, we got the food mill out again, much to the delight of Simon, who had missed the opportunity to use it during our other tomato-squishing sessions.

Simon figuring out all the pieces of the food mill

This is what 15 pounds of tomatoes looks like

The squishing and cranking never gets old

A great job for two brothers!

Preserving stuff does take time. After the boys milled the tomatoes, I put the whole bowl of sauce/juice in the fridge to deal with the next day. Nothing wrong with dividing the process up to make it manageable!

Even though you will get a lot of juice when milling beefsteaks, the juice will boil down, given enough time, into a luscious sauce. Which is what we did. I decided to finally pay homage to the spaghetti sauce recipe in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle–one of the books that got me started on my whole gardening journey. The recipe can be found HERE: we cut it in half since we were dealing with 15 pounds of tomatoes, not 30. (We also did not add dried lemon peel as the recipe asked for. Oh, and we also cut the basil in half…it seemed like so much!)

Love, juicy tomato puree, with a mountain of spices, pre-cooking

After hours of slowly cooking down-a delightful spaghetti sauce!

The flavor was great, but maybe a bit spicy. I think one of the reasons it turned out spicier than we expected is because we added all the ingredients prior to cooking the sauce down. Next time, we’ll cook the sauce down a bit to get rid of some of the juice, then add the rest of the ingredients as it finishes cooking to the perfect thickness.We will also experiment with more sauce recipes, but for now we have 3 meals worth of delicious homemade sauce waiting for us in the freezer, and that is such a satisfying feeling!

From Andi’s Garden at Little*Big*Harvest

Urban Gardening Using your Harvest

Let's Deal with the Tomatoes

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Well, I said I wanted tomatoes this year. I certainly got my wish! They’ve been coming in by the bucket-full. Not too shabby for the tiny little space they are growing in. Pictured above is the harvest from one morning! Here are our overgrown, gangly, but beautiful tomato kids:

9 plants here (Amish Paste, heirloom)

5 plants here (from left to right behind Rylee–1 early girl hybrid, 2 beefsteak hybrid, 2 mystery plants from neighbor)

The Amish Paste (purchased from Baker Creek Seeds) have produced beyond our wildest dreams. The variety of shapes that have come from them has been a little surprising…from slim, typical looking Roma tomatoes (what I expected) to huge red balloons that somewhat resemble Romas, to perfectly round, unRoma looking little guys. It’s okay, we will take them all, no matter what shape or size. Roma-type tomatoes are the very best tomatoes for preserving, because they contain much more flesh than they do seeds or juice.

We have had three tomato processing sessions, one per week in the month of August. While I have all the stuff for canning, I just don’t have the guts to set it all up yet. I feel confident that we would be able to, after last fall’s applesauce and this summer’s jam, but for now I just feel more comfortable with freezing. We have plenty of freezer space in the garage right now, so it works out well.

Following are the picture stories of our three separate tomato processing sessions! We are getting quite a stash for winter!

Note: The food mill you see in our saucing pictures is one of the best contraptions ever. We used it to make applesauce last fall. It is a magical little machine that screens all the seeds and skin off the fruit, leaving you with sauce. The kids LOVE turning the crank and watching the slurpy, squirty demise of the tomatoes! It is one of my favorite preservation tools at the moment, and though it set me back about 40.00, I won’t be without one from now on.

Week one: Sauce

Squish!! I can’t emphasize enough how enjoyable this food press is for little hands to operate!

Beautiful, fresh tomato sauce…yum

Bennet the Knight, with his conquest

Week two: Sauce

The always-goofy brother and sister pair, Rylee and Brady!

The leftover guts are spilling into our big white bowl. We send the guts through again, sometimes even yet again after that, to get all the juice we possibly can.

Maggie joined in, she could not resist

We simmered our juicy sauce down for quite some time, until it was reduced by half. We wanted a nice, thick sauce.

Can’t forget to feed the leftover seeds and skin to the compost!

Week three: Diced and Whole

Since I’ve skinned tomatoes before, I had a plan this time. It’s so much easier if everything is set up in order; your tomatoes, a boiling pot, a compost pot for the skins, a bowl of ice water, cutting board, and large bowl for newly skinned tomatoes. A knife and slotted spoon are essential.

Make an X with your knife on the bottom of the tomato.

Put into the boiling water. I am way too distracted to time it…but usually a minute or so will do. The skin will start to peel as it boils, usually.

Take the tomato from the boiling water, dunk it into ice water…

…and the skin will peel right off.

Rylee helped make this a very quick, efficient job! I HIGHLY recommend that two people work together on tomato peeling. It is much quicker and less messy if you both have designated jobs.

Some of the tomatoes we left whole, and some we diced.

Rylee assured me that her mother was ok with her using a knife!

Dividing our skinless tomatoes up; whole and diced.

Justin came to check out the fun!

We used a scale to get about 15 ounces in each freezer container; the size we use most in recipes.

Near the end, Rylee snuck a lot of bites. How awesome is it that she became famished for tomatoes while skinning and chopping them?!

I like to use scotch tape for a label, with one side folded over so it’s easy to remove later.

We will be enjoying these all winter! AND, we still are being bombarded by tomatoes, so we will be freezing even more–maybe even filling the whole top section of the freezer!

Using your Harvest Vegetarian Recipes

Warm Up Your Evening with Winter Pizza

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I can’t think of a more appropriate winter pizza than this one! Sweet potatoes from storage, and kale from the cold frame…ingredients readily available in the middle of this long, cold season. Also, the flavor is amazing!

I was skeptical at first–kale? Sweet potatoes? Trust me, get over the doubt and try it at least once if you like either of those ingredients one bit. I’m going out on a limb and assuming you love red onions…because everybody HAS to love red onions. Right?

I found the recipe over at twopeasandtheirpod.com. Below is their exact recipe, but I altered it a bit when I made it. Though I made a full batch of dough, I used about a third of it on this pizza. Since I was only using a portion of the dough for a smaller pizza, most of the ingredients needed cut down. Also, I sprinkled dried rosemary on top instead of fresh.

Also posted on Andi’s recipe blog

Sweet Potato Kale Pizza with Rosemary & Red Onion

Yield: 1 pizza

Cook Time: 10-15 minutes

ingredients:

Your favorite pizza dough-we used this pizza dough recipe

1 large sweet potato, thinly sliced, about 1/4 inch thick

1/2 red onion, sliced

1 1/2 tablespoon olive oil, divided

Salt and pepper, for seasoning potato slices and onion

1 1/2 cups mozzarella cheese

1 1/2 cups chopped kale

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon, freshly chopped rosemary

directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Place the sweet potato slices and red onion slices in a bow and toss with 1/2 tablespoon of the olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Place on a large baking sheet and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the sweet potatoes are soft and tender. Make sure you turn them once during the 20 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool while you prepare the pizza dough.

2. Turn the oven to 500 degrees F or as high as your oven will go. If you have a pizza stone, place the pizza stone in the oven to get hot. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the pizza dough, using a rolling pin. Roll it out to about 3/8 of an inch. Place the pizza dough on a pizza peel or pan that has been generously coated with corn meal. Lightly brush the dough with the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil. In a small bowl, toss the kale with balsamic vinegar. Top the pizza dough with mozzarella cheese, sweet potato slices, kale, red onion slices, and fresh rosemary.

3. Place the pizza in the oven-directly on the pizza stone, if using one, or on the oven rack. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until pizza crust is golden and cheese is melted. Remove from oven and let cool for a few minutes before slicing. Slice and serve warm.

Using your Harvest

Nature's Candy

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Want a sweet and tasty snack that your kids might even choose over their dwindling bag of Halloween candy? Dry some apples! You will end up with chewy, unbelievably sweet morsels of happiness. You will put a lot of work into them and they will disappear shockingly quickly. But really, the work is well worth it!

Follow along with me as I dry up a big batch myself!

1). Borrow a food dehydrator. You could always buy one if you have cash laying around, but maybe you have a really nice family member like I do who buys lots of food gadgets, and then lets you use them, sometimes for months on end. 😉 If the weather is perfect (i.e. it’s still mid-summer) and you want to get really rustic, try drying your apples outside on a warm day. Two ideas that intrigue me (and that I may be crazy enough to try with the kids next summer):

*put the fruit on trays on and put them in your car

*lay the fruit out on your trampoline on a hot day, covering it with mesh

Let’s say that you have a food dehydrator handy, though, and electricity. Here’s the one I borrowed:

2). Get your apples ready. I found the most efficient way to get somewhat-uniform apples was this step by step process:

*Cut a big old mess of apples up, using an apple corer-slicer. Put a dark colored towel under your workspace; the sticky juice that oozes every time you use the slicer will stain the towel if it’s white. Trust me, I know. Make a mountian of apples, and don’t worry that some of the apples will have bad spots or mushy yucky parts–you will sort them out as you peel them in the next step. Just keep going, shoving that slicer through the apples like you are on a slicing marathon. Beware: you will get juice everywhere, your hands will get very sticky, and juice will spray into your eyes on multiple occasions.

*Wash your hands of all the stickiness so that you are clean and fresh for the next step. Peel each apple segment with your favorite knife. Depending on the size of the apple it came from, you may need to slice the segment in half. Throw all the segments into a big bowl as you go along. You want all the pieces to be somewhat similar in size, but it’s not even close to rocket science–they will all dry eventually.

*Dump the segments onto the trays of the food dehydrator and spread them around so that no edges are not touching. No need to be perfect. Though if I do say so myself…mine look spread out pretty perfectly. It was my third batch of apples–what can I say, I’m becoming a natural.

*Dry the apples for the time recommended on the dehydrator. I didn’t have a manual to refer to, so I did an internet search, which gave me the very precise time of anywhere between 7 to 24 hours. Since I don’t believe in specific times for anything anyway, I just opened the lid and checked the apples every hour or so. After about 8 hours, my apples had a perfect chew to them. You want to avoid getting them so dry they are brittle, but you definitely want all the moisture out of them so that they will keep on your shelf for months.

*Open the finished product right up on the table around a gaggle of children. For some reason leaving the apples in the dehydrator is more appealing than ever. They will dive in on it, peeling each dried apple off the trays to put right in their mouth, and think you are amazing.

If there are some dried apples left, pack them up in airtight containers.

If not devoured, they will stay good through the winter.

Using your Harvest Vegetarian Recipes

3 Sisters Soup

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I’m paying homage to the 3 Sisters Garden with some FABULOUS soup!

Not too long ago I posted about my visit to the beautiful homestead of FutureFarming. While I was there, I immediately recognized one of the gardens as being a ‘3 Sisters Garden‘. I found this great link that explains the legend, and includes some nice diagrams showing how you can implement a 3 sisters garden in your own space:

Please CLICK HERE! Learn about the 3 Sisters Legend!

A 3 sisters garden lends itself perfectly to a pot of warm soup. This recipe is incredibly simple, yet delicious! I kept thinking that I’d have to add something to it, because it was so insanely easy, but it tasted perfect. My family could not get enough of it. I had tried a couple other versions of 3 Sisters Soup before this one; one included zucchini, white beans, and corn–another included acorn squash, corn, and pinto beans.

This particular recipe stood out from the rest to me because it has green beans and potatoes in it–two of the plants that were growing in the 3 sisters garden at the Future Farming homestead. I also like that this recipe includes hominy. Native Americans would soak corn kernels in a lye solution, creating hominy, which stored better than raw corn because it would not sprout. In addition to improved storage, hominy is also said to have an edge over plain corn nutritionally, as the soaking process converts some the vitamins into a form that is more readily accessible to our bodies. Though most of us don’t know how to make hominy, it’s currently readily available, canned, in just about any grocery store. I have found white and golden hominy in cans–I personally think the golden hominy is much more flavorful (white hominy is made from white corn, golden from yellow corn). As a side note, I think learning to make hominy would be a great sustainability project! Click here to see a very simple way to make your own hominy.

Something to keep in mind when making this simple and soul-warming 3 Sister Soup–make sure you use a good, quality vegetable broth–since there are no spices except pepper, you’ll need that good broth to carry the flavor. Of course, you can always add spices and herbs if needed, but I find that the wonderful flavor of this soup in its barest form calls for nothing extra! I have made it three times for the family (I had a monster butternut squash to use up)…and it will be a staple around here during the cold months. Enjoy!

Three Sisters Soup

(adapted from allrecipes.com)

2 c. golden hominy (can use corn instead if desired)

2 c. fresh or frozen green beans (trimmed and snapped if fresh)

2 c. winter squash (i.e. butternut or acorn), peeled and cubed

1 1/2 c. peeled and cubed potatoes

5 c. vegetable broth

2 T. butter

2 T. flour

1/4 t. pepper

Place the hominy, green beans, squash, and potatoes into a pot, and pour in the vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Simmer until the vegetable are soft. Melt the butter in a bowl and blend the flour into it with a fork, then stir into the soup (I dip the bowl into the soup a few times to get all the buttery goodness out). Increase heat to medium, and cook until the soup thickens. Season with pepper and serve.

Peeling and chopping a squash can be challenging. I find it easiest to cut the squash into small sections that are more easily peeled, then dicing up the flesh of the peeled sections.

Urban Gardening Using your Harvest

Too many little tomatoes? Roast them.

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We got a little too excited this year when planting our tomatoes. We remembered how much we loved the luscious little yellow pear tomatoes, so we planted 5 of them. That may not sound like a lot, but when each plant keeps producing, and producing, suddenly 5 plants create way too many tomatoes to enjoy.

Big red tomatoes are easier, I think, to deal with in excess. Simply make sauce! I toyed around with the idea of making yellow tomato sauce (and I still may), but then I remembered this idea that I had seen somewhere. Ideally, I’d like to dehydrate the tomatoes in a food dryer, or a homemade solar dryer, to remove all the moisture. I have neither of those options at the moment, so a long slow roast in the oven is the way I went. This is an excellent way to do something different with all those little cherry, grape or pear tomatoes that keep piling up! Here is what I did:

1. Slice the little tomatoes in half and lay them on a baking sheet, cut side up. You can do this with any little tomatoes, of any color. Drizzle with the tiniest bit of olive oil (I find my handy mister perfect for a task like this to get a nice, light even coating). Sprinkle with a tiny bit of salt. I used pepper this time, but next time I won’t–the pepper flavor was a little too much in the end.

2. Place tomatoes in an oven that is preheated to 250 degrees. Then walk away and find a great book to read. Do not clean the house. That’s not fun. Do something FUN and relaxing, but don’t leave the house for 3 hours. That’s how long it will take for the tomatoes to be mostly leathery, with just a bit of moisture left in their centers.

3. Eat a whole bunch of them. Mmmm! Now stuff the rest in a jar and cover with olive oil. If you are little horrified, like I was at first, about dumping a bunch of olive oil into a jar–don’t worry. The oil can still be used for other recipes once your tomatoes have been eaten up. You can keep these in the fridge for a few weeks. Some sources say several months. I really doubt they would last that long without being devoured! Eat them plain from the jar, or put on a salad, or a pizza. Use them like you would sundried tomatoes. If you have a great recipe using sundried tomatoes, or a cool use for these little roasted nuggets of tomato goodness, please post a link to it in our comments!