Finding myself with a glut of fresh veggies, most of which are not very pretty thanks to all the rain around here lately, and having found myself down to my last canning jars, I decided it was time to try something new.

Given the fact that two bathing suits have been hanging out to dry for over a week quite unsuccessfully, thanks to what seems to be a daily downpour here, not to mention the fondness our squirrels have shown towards tomatoes, I decided to forgo the idea of drying tomatoes out in the sun and went for the oven method instead.

While I had the oven on, I threw in some Thai Cayenne peppers a friend gave me and dried them out as well.  I read you can hang them up and they’ll dry out in your kitchen over time, but the oven was on, and well, I’m not a patient person. 

It took most of the afternoon and evening yesterday, with the oven on at the lowest temperature (still quicker than any other method). I dried out a cookie sheet worth of cherry and roma tomatoes,  as well as a decent amount of peppers.  The smell was amazing and when I tasted the tomatoes, they were like candy.   Yum.  Much better than any other dried tomato I’ve ever had.  Why have I not tried this before?