What To Do With Garden Leftovers

Good morning lovely lemonheads! I hope you are doing well. Do you have a garden or have you had a garden in the past? If so, you are probably faced with the opportunity I was faced with…What to do with an overabundance of veggies.

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As a worker in a soup kitchen, I can tell you a great way to give back to your community is to give the extra produce to this organization. My church was blessed with many boxes of corn, watermelons, and other goodies from a local organic farm in my town. Everyone loved these fresh additions to our meals!

Unfortunately, I had more tomatoes than I could eat, but not enough to give to a soup kitchen. So, what’s a girl to do? Make oven dried tomatoes!

Oven Dried Goodness!

What? Basically oven dried tomatoes are like sun dried tomatoes that you make at home. It is so super easy to do. I use cherry tomatoes to do this, but I am sure regular sized tomatoes cut into chunks would work fabulously.

First I cut my tomatoes in half (or chunks) and let them drain on a paper towel for 30 minutes to an hour. This helps wick some of the juice from the tomatoes, so you don’t have to cook them in the oven for so long. Then, I put my tomatoes on a cookie sheet. I make sure they don’t touch, and I put them skin side down, so they don’t stick. Then I put them in an oven on the lowest temperature (mine is 170 degrees F) for 3 – 6 hours. I start with 3 hours and then if they aren’t completely dry, I just leave them in for longer, checking them once an hour. When your tomatoes are completely dry (but not so dry they are disintegrating in your hand), I either freeze them in a plastic freezer bag or I reconstitute them and pack them in oil.

I love to reconstitute some of the tomatoes and then pack them in oil with herbs and garlic. After a few days, this mixture makes a lovely oil to make dressing for salad or to dip bread in…Yummm!

To reconstitute your tomatoes when you are ready to use them, all you have to do is boil a little water, pour it over the tomatoes you want to use, and let it soak for 10 minutes. Then drain the water off the tomatoes and use them in a salad, on a pizza, in pasta, or anything else you might use a tomato for.

Oven dried tomatoes have such a wonderfully dense tomato flavor…They are soo rich and delicious! And they last much longer than a regular tomato left to its own devices.

So, what do you do with your garden leftovers?