Drying Tomatoes

On Wednesday I decided to dry some of my cherry tomatoes when my full of great ideas and make work projects inspiring and motivational friend told me how yummy they were.  I started them off in my solar dryer and then finished then in the oven once the sun went down and they were, as she had promised, delicious.

See how good they look?
So...being the sort of person I am I went to pick a whole box full of cherry tomatoes on Thursday and planned to dry them as well, paying little attention to the fact that we also had plans to go camping on Friday morning.  Solar drying was out since I didn't get home with the tomatoes until late afternoon so I needed to find a way to fit as many as possible into the oven at once.

I love the mix of types of tomatoes and colours all together.

I also ended up with one batch of...ahem, let's say very carmelized tomatoes. ;-)  These I will take to that inspiring friend so we can both have a good laugh at our overdo it tendencies.    I'm sure I was trying to pack, stew tomatoes, make dog food, do laundry and tidy up while these ones spent just a little too long in the oven.  (I know my friend will appreciate how crazy it is that we both do these sorts of things (regularly) but will also acknowledge the fact that neither one of us would choose to live life any way other than full on.)

But most of them turned out just fine - incredibly intensely flavoured little bits of summertime, which will be delightful on our weekly pizza nights come Winter.

And since I was already in town picking cherry tomatoes you know I had to pick a bunch of beefsteak tomatoes which were overripe and going to waste.  They were crying out to be stewed and tucked away for wintertime soups.

And, we still managed to get away for a gorgeous, almost Autumn weekend of camping.  I think camping might be done for the year so it felt especially good to make the time to get away.