I just had to show you this picture of these delicious semi-dehydrated tomatoes we made several weeks ago! We found ourselves with a case of Roma tomatoes that was starting to go bad with little time to eat them all before they would qualify for the compost pile.
This is a challenge I have heard from students and raw food enthusiasts over my 31 years on the raw plant-based path – having more produce than they can eat in a specified amount of time. This tends to happen more often when one is new to this lifestyle, but many of us who have been on the path for years may find ourselves in this situation.
One of my most common suggestions is to eat more, especially if they find themselves hungry – that’s an obvious suggestion. But what can you do if you find yourself in our shoes with an extra case of tomatoes that are starting to show signs of senescence or a case of bananas that are suddenly overripe? Or leafy greens that are on the way to turning yellow?
Freezing can work well for the bananas and can go towards making delicious bowls of banana ice cream and the leafy greens such as kale or collard greens can be made into kale or collard chips. These suggestions are well known, utilized, and appreciated.
But what about tomatoes? Have you ever made your own dehydrated tomatoes? We love them – and find them to be more flavorful than the commercially sundried ones we’ve found online. A few weeks ago, we made a whole dehydrator-full of them and enjoyed them for many days afterwards. We love the partially dehydrated tomatoes the best since they have a jelly-like consistency along with a concentrated tomato flavor. Yum! We’ve also recently dehydrated red bell peppers which we used in our salad dressings and raw hummus.
It goes without saying that we prefer fresh whole foods, but dehydrating and freezing are a good alternative to having perfectly good produce wither into compost and can be a great opportunity to create some great new recipes. What have you done to preserve your excess produce?