You Say Tomato

    I saw an article recently about tomato powder and I was obsessed with making some but the number one tool I needed was a food dehydrator.  No, the oven didn't work. The tomatoes need to be as crisp as potato chips and the oven just didn't get there.
    Enter friends.  Friend Aina planted 92 tomato plants this year and by now in the season she's emotionally done with dealing with them so I went over to her house with a small box (she was waiting for me with a bushel basket) and picked some.
Friend Linda is a big garage saler and when I told her I was looking for a food dehydrator because I don't want to invest in a gadget till I know this process will work, she said she had one she got at a garage sale and I was welcome to use it.

    This couldn't be any easier to use.  Slice very thinly what you want to dry.  Layer them on the three stackable drying racks, put the cover on and turn on the machine.

 Hours later, voila!  Tomato chips!  Now in the interest of full disclosure, I cut the first batch of tomatoes thicker than I should/could have and it took a long while to dry them.  Like a long time. Like we started at 11:30 a.m. yesterday, I turned them off at 9:30 p.m. and turned it back on this morning for awhile. But in the end they are crispy.

Crispy enough to grind up in the mini-food processor/chopper.  Yes, I could have ground them even finer into even more of a powder but this batch I left in a very lightly coarse chop.
What's the point of all of this?????  Tomato powder??  Well, I'm cooking for some friends tomorrow and I just salt/pepper/tomato powdered the pork tenderloins and set them in the fridge to think about it.  I'll let you know tomorrow if it was worth it.

But I do have my eyes on the green peppers and the chili peppers Aina gave me, too.  I'll try those next.  If this turns out to be fun I'll get my own machine.