Someone who has an organic tomato patch invited us to come and pick as many tomatoes as we wanted (which became an activity for my visiting married children and grandchildren!), and the day after, I got an amazing deal on four cases of tomatoes. So the question was, what to do with all this amazing abundance before it turned to mush?

My dehydrator isn’t working, and I didn’t want to dehydrate slices of tomatoes in my outdoor setup that I described to you when I recently dehydrated mushrooms. Also, my past experience with dehydrating tomatoes is that they sat for AGES in a glass jar in my pantry before I finally threw them away. If I’m not going to use it, there’s no point in dehydrating them, right?

I decided to try something new, sun-dried tomatoes (in the oven!), which was super yummy and a big hit.

I cut a bunch of tomatoes in half or quarters (depending on the size), then sprinkled them with olive oil and a mixture of herbs. (One batch was salt and zaatar, another was a mixture of salt and Italian herbs.) I slow roasted them in the oven at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit for hours, until they were mostly dried out but still had some moisture. (These wouldn’t be suitable for long term storage due to the oil and moisture.) When I took them out of the oven, these flew off of the pan!

So I made another huge batch for Shabbos, which I dried a bit less and they were even better! Very tasty on top of challah or eaten on their own.

I also cooked a huge pot of tomatoes and made matbucha, which I froze in meal size containers. We enjoy a variety of dips at our Shabbos meals, and matbucha is one of our staples.

Avivah