Tomatoes Everywhere

Tomato season has finally arrived!  I was starting to think my tomatoes would never change over from persistent green to ripe red (or orange, depending on the variety).  But now, my patience is paying off with a glut of delightful Pink Brandywine (third generation of my own saved seeds), Orange Banana (a gorgeous orange paste heirloom tomato, meaty and full of flavor) and dozens of fat Principe Borghese drying tomatoes, which I slice and pop into the dehydrator.  I wish my solar dehydrator hadn't bit the dust via a large tree branch smashing it to bits as it fell, but luckily my electric dehydrator works good enough to give me a stash of dried tomatoes to squirrel away for winter months.

So far, I've made a couple small batches of salsa.  I think there are more on the way this week--which makes me very happy about my stash of dried hot peppers.  My peppers this year did nothing much, I think it was too cool for their liking, but I have jalapenos, cherry bomb and some crazy super hot pepper I call Kim's Mystery Pepper (after my lovely friend who grows them) in storage.  All I do is rehydrate them in hot water for an hour or so, chop up, and add to the salsa.  They work just as nicely as fresh ones, and when you're canning the lot anyway, what does it really matter if they are fresh from the garden this year, or last?  The salsa comes out lovely regardless.  And when life hands you tomatoes, salsa is where it's at.