Preserving, preserving, preserving...

Today is Thursday August 9, 2012. This morning I am working on more of the preserving that I have been doing all week.

Monday, I attempted to make jelly...and well I thought I had failed. It turned out runny and more like syrup. So I labeled it as such and went about my merry way.

Tuesday, I made a killer batch of salsa that leaves you sweating and wanting to cool down the inside of your mouth which seems like it is on fire. (My husband is ecstatic about the salsa!)

Yesterday, Wednesday, I tried my hand at making more jelly. The top picture is from that excursion. I can successfully say, that this batch of jelly turned out wonderful, and it set up just like it was supposed to. As I was putting my jars down in storage yesterday afternoon...I discovered the "syrup" I had made on Monday set up, and is now jelly as well. So that turned out wonderful...it just took a bit longer.

Today is Thursday. Today I am dehydrating tomatoes. Now, you are probably asking why am I dehydrating tomatoes? Well, really the answer is quites simple. Less storage space. Instead of making tomato sauce, and tomato juice. I dehydrate the tomatoes down, once dry, run them through a blender and I will have tomato powder. The powder, depending on how much water you mix with it, can be juice, sauce, get my drift? I can cut out a lot of excess storage requirements for my tomato products if I dehydrate and powder.

As I go through the stages of dehydrating the tomatoes, I will keep posting so you can see just how easy it is. I have very little storage space in my cellar right now for a lot of extra jars of tomato products, and have a ton of tomatoes coming...this was what made the most sense to me!