Zucchini

Everyone gets it and tries to figure out what to make with it. I'm going to dehydrate powder it down and use it for bread. I asked my sister, doubting C (well just out dc it's easier lol) and of course she said no it can't be done. When you use it for bread it won't get enough moisture etc and your bread will be dry blah blah blah. Well dc didn't think that you have to rehydrate it first. Brings a whole new meaning to wahla  just add water lol
I read on another site theprovidenthomemaker.com
 that you can shred  it and put it on the racks in 2 cups measurements and then when it's dry powder it one tray at a time. Once this is done, you can measure how much it is then and you know how much powder is equal to 2 cups. When you need it rehydrate it.
Or you can trust the site and go by this

Do you have too much zucchini?

You could give it away.  Or shred and freeze it.  Or puree it and then freeze.  (I prefer pureeing & freezing because it maintains the same texture when thawed. It hides better in zucchini bread and soup, too.)

OR....

dehydrate it and turn it to powder.

It takes very little space to store it this way, and it's easy to use.  Mix 2-3 Tbsp. of powder with enough hot water to equal one cup- for one cup (8 oz.) of puree.

Try it in Lemon-Zucchini Bread or Curried Zucchini Bisque (creamy soup).  Mmm.

See this post for how to best store the powder.

I'll do it her way ;)

Stole for wedding

Stole for wedding, a photo by alg35538 on Flickr.

I'm finally finished with this stole. It took forever to make. This isn't the final siz foe it. It's more than twice this size.
It's also the first time that I've used beads in my knitting. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be,

A gloomy day

It's been a dreary day today. It's been raining on and off all day. We do need it but with the temps it's another way to say that fall is here.
I do love fall, but out summer has been really strange. It's as though we were shorted on it.

I'm still doing tomatoes as they ripen out of the garden. I should have a good stockpile by the time I'm done.  I bought some carrots to can as well. I was going to do them today but I didn't think the tomatoes would keep another day.

If its cool tommrow I will do them then.

Maters everywhere

Little by little the tomatoes are slowing down. Today is a mixed batch of cherry, roma and I believe beefsteak. I put the cherry ones on the bottom because I leave the seeds in. Then the roma because they are meater and then the beefsteak. Once the roma and beefsteak have the seeds out they shrink down quite a bit.
I had been running them through a Emmy food processor to grind them down, however, it still left it pretty chunky. But then someone on Raverly, love that site, suggested putting them into a coffee grinder / spice grinder. Brilliance is the word for that. So that's what I'm going to try on this batch team is drying now. Ill let you know how it works.

Here's a good tip that I read. Separate your dried tomatoes into separate batches at first. Turn them upside down for a bit in the container that they will be in. If moisture shows up then pop them in the freezer. Keeping them separate will stop the other dried tomatoes from the moister of the others.

Dried cherry tomatoes , Roma tomatoes

Dried cherry tomatoes , Roma tomatoes, a photo by alg35538 on Flickr.

This is what all of those cherries dried down to. They took forever. I went to bed at midnight and they were still a bit tacky.
I know it was because of the seeds still ion them but they taste great.
To the right are some Roma tomatoes with the seeds out of them. I turned the machine on at 9:50 am. Lets see how long it takes these to dry.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes, a photo by alg35538 on Flickr.

Tomatoes

With me being out of work I have to try and save as much money as I can. No matter how little it seems at the time in the long run it ads up.
In comes the maters lol every year my dad starts a ton of tomatoes in the greenhouse that he built onto his house. I think we got 5 different kinds this year. And since this is about the only thing that will grown in our backyard they grow like crazy.
This year I decided to try my hand at dehydrating tomatoes. I've never done it before so I did what every one would do, I turned to the Internet. There are tons of things out there, everywhere. I tried Pinterest figuring that it would have some good links and Raverly   These sites got me pictures, links and suggestions on books and websites.
I decided to start on the cherry tomatoes first since this is what we had the most of. At first I started to break the halls apart but then just left them. It was easier to arrange them on the racks this way.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37043606@N04/9657117506/