Tomato preserves

It would appear that the tomato blossom end rot only affected a couple of my tomato plants.

So I was been busy harvesting tomatoes frantically over the last weekend.  I had sowed both red heirloom, red and yellow cocktail and large yellow tomatoes - can't remember where I got them but I think that they were Franchi Sementi seeds.

Not having the power to run a freezer in order to preserve my harvest, I have had to think laterally.

So, here is a preview of what I have done with the first batch of tomatoes that I picked :)

A collage of my first tomato preserves for 2014

I made 6 jars of whole peeled tomatoes, 3 jars of tomato sauce (ketchup) and...

Bottled tomatoes and tomato
sauce (ketchup)
The tall re-used bottle of tomato sauce
from the red wine vinegar will have to go
in my fridge to be used first

... two ice trays filled with tomato purée concentrate.

Tomato paste

When I peeled the tomatoes I kept the skins to one side.  I shoved them onto an oven tray in the solar oven to dry out - with the lid open so that I didn't burn them.  Unfortunately, before they were fully dry it started to cloud over and drizzle.  That put paid to solar drying my tomato skins.

My solar dehydrator is still not ready.  Will I be able to use it before the end of this season?  Time will tell...

The next sunny day was predicted for 2 days later - I couldn't wait that long to pop them back into the solar oven - I was in the swing of it LOL

Drying the tomato skins

On Sunday night, as the weather was a bit iffy, we lit the Rosie for the first time this year and I put the skins in the oven to finish drying.  (Lighting the Rosie was a definite teaser for the winter ahead - I can hardly wait LOL)

Using RMan's coffee grinder to grind the
dried tomato skins

When they were good and crispy, they got shoved into RMan's (cleaned) coffee grinder and blitzed for a couple of minutes, until they looked like this:

A close-up of the ground tomato skins

The crushed skins smell amazing, and I'm looking forward to adding them to pizza's, bread and cheese scones :)  Those I'm storing in a jar with a sachet of moisture absorber (I can't remember the proper name, but you know what I mean?) that arrived in my bottle of magnesium tablets.

Even the pips didn't go to waste.  After I had made the tomato sauce (ketchup) and the tomato concentrate, I was left with a whole bunch of seeds and some remnants of tomato flesh in the sieve.  That went into a container in the fridge and got added to a bolognaise sauce I made for RMan's dinner a couple of nights later.  Very tasty it was too :)

It is the first time that I have ever used the entire tomato and I can't imagine why it took me so long to do so.

There is triple the amount of tomatoes reading for picking this weekend, so come on sun - I need to make some sundried tomatoes in my solar oven, and a batch of my salad dressing which uses whole peeled tomatoes, and there are also lots more to bottle...