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Dried Tomatoes and other goodies. - 10/27/2009 10:37:44 AM

estah

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Greetings,

verity has gotten her hands onto a good supply of tomatoes, apples and such and does not have the place to store cans (the cellar is not yet ready) and verity does not want to throw anything away. She would like to try drying the various vegetables and fruits she has but she is not sure where to start. She has looked on google and found literally hundreds of recipes for them, each different. She has seen the good advice for such things here and was wondering if she could get some tips also concerning the drying and storage of dried products (fruits and vegetables).

verity

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RE: Dried Tomatoes and other goodies. - 10/27/2009 1:11:10 PM

Termyn8or

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Well, it is very hard to effectively freeze fresh fruits and veggies. Most of them need to be partially cooked or blanched or something or they will not come out resembling what went in.

If some of the tomatoes are green, wrap each individually in newspaper and throw them in a paper bag in a cool dry place. This will slow the ripening process which is chemically very similar to rotting. The ones that are ripe, use. If you have more ripe ones than use can use, they can be reduced by boiling and and then freezing. Then they are good indefinitely for sauces and such.

Apples are a tougher nut to crack. For one, you could bake and freeze a bunch of apple pies, or even stopping short of that, make something like apple pie filling and freeze it. The pies can also be frozen if you make them all the way. Things like this should generally only be partly cooked for best results. What else do you do with apples ? Anything that involves cooking them, partailly do at least the filling or whatever. It should freeze just fine. If any are green, I don't know if wrapping in paper will work as well as it does for tomatoes. Perhaps someone around knows, I have never tried it.

Just some ideas.

T

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RE: Dried Tomatoes and other goodies. - 10/27/2009 1:17:10 PM

DesFIP

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Food dehydrator if you can borrow or buy one. Otherwise you can dry slices of the fruits between layers of cheesecloth in a low oven for about 10 hours. If you live in a sunny dry area you can put them between layers of cheese cloth for several days in the sun.

Tomatoes can be frozen. Remove stem ends, halve, remove seeds and water, freeze. When they thaw you can easily slip the skins off and then turn into sauce.

Apples can be tossed with sugar and spices and frozen in bags suitable to fill one pie each. Otherwise cook into applesauce, put in freezer containers and freeze. However you could can and store the canned goods under the bed. They don't have to have a pantry to stand in. Apple butter is a favorite here.

Ask a friend to store a box in exchange for some of the goodies.

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RE: Dried Tomatoes and other goodies. - 10/27/2009 1:17:38 PM

estah

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Greetings,

Thank you for the suiggestions, verity will try them out.

verity

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RE: Dried Tomatoes and other goodies. - 10/27/2009 1:19:05 PM

estah

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Ohhh Apple butter sounds good...do you have a good recipe for making it?

verity

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RE: Dried Tomatoes and other goodies. - 10/27/2009 3:07:45 PM

agirl

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quote:

ORIGINAL: estah

Ohhh Apple butter sounds good...do you have a good recipe for making it?

verity

Ditto. I've never heard of that.

agirl

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RE: Dried Tomatoes and other goodies. - 10/28/2009 2:45:26 AM

DesFIP

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Cook apples quartered in a little cider until soft. Then put through a food mill or some sort of strainer to remove seeds, skins and cores. For every 2 quarts of apple pulp add 4 cups of sugar and 2 teaspoons cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon cloves. Cook slowly stirring frequently until it jells. The really scary part is that I don't even have to look it up after making it all last week, batch at a time.

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