To-ma-to, Tom-ahhh-to!

Although we've already had a frost, we did manage to pick most of our tomatoes just prior to the unwelcome cool down.
Buckets and buckets of tomatoes!
Because their shelf life is somewhat short we had to move quickly to ensure we could enjoy the fruits of our labor for months to come.

First we made some Salsa. We started by cutting up Jalapeno's from the garden, next we added red, yellow, and orange bell peppers. These were not from our garden, more on that another time. We also added a bunch of red onion from the garden.
Next, we scored the ends of the tomatoes and blanched them for a couple of minutes to remove the skins.
We put all of the ingredients into a pot and bring it up to a boil. We then added some Cilantro from the garden for an authentic taste!
We processed them in a boiling water bath. We wound up with seven jars of Salsa but we still have more tomatoes!

We decided to dehydrate some for long term storage. Once washed, we slice the tomatoes and lay them on the dehydrator trays. We try to cut them as uniformly as possible for an even drying time.
Here you can see them coming out of the dehydrator ready for storage.
We store them in half gallon size Mason jars and vacuum seal them.

We still have a lot more so we'll be making soup, freezing some, sharing a few with friends and enjoying tomato sandwiches every two or three hours for the next week or two!