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Monday, September 13, 2010

Royal Burgundy Beans and dried Cherry Tomatoes

The grasshoppers did a job on my Royal Burgundy Beans!  They totally defoliated them!

Didn't take a picture to share... just picture in your mind... your beautiful bean plants stripped of leaves... so that you're looking at stems and branches... kind of like a tree in the dead of winter.... sigh...

So, I picked what was left and pulled all the plants.

I really liked these mild tasting beans and  they have beautiful burgundy pods which turn green when you cook them.  No... it has nothing to do with the fact that burgundy is my favorite color... lol!

Some of these pods will be kept for the seeds.  WILL BE planting them again next year!


I dug out my food dehydrator and got it all cleaned up!  Man was it a mess after sitting around in storage for um... 7 years!

So far I've dried... cherry and grape tomatoes, viva italia slices, champagne grapes (from my Bountiful Basket co-op), black grapes (also from BB co-op), apple slices, mint, and oregano.

I decided that this year I wanted to add some dried fruit (and eventually veggies) to my food storage.  So now I have a small collection!  Man those grapes made the BEST raisins I have ever tasted!!!!  Going to be yummy in scones!

12 comments:

  1. Well, that's one way to store those tomatoes! Do you add them to soups and stuff later, or what?

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  2. I'd love to add some dehydrated tomatoes to my pastas. How yummy that's going to be in your God-Awful winter!

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  3. Hi EG. Yes, I'm thinking soups.

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  4. Oh Ribbit... winters aren't all that bad. Yes, added to pasta sounds good!

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  5. Your dried tomatoes and grapes sound fantastic. They look great in the jars, too!

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  6. Thanks thyme2garden! They do look pretty in the jars! And the taste is pretty intense! Thanks for stopping by!

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  7. I bet the small tomatoes make a great dehydrated tomato product. Sorry about the grasshopper problem with the beans. When we lived in central Washington (dry sagebrush country) we would periodically get overrun by grasshoppers and they were a major problem.

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  8. kitsapFG this was a bad year for grasshoppers... I'm thinking that it would be pretty cool to have chickens to eat them...

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  9. Oh seven year. I think my dehydrator sat on the shelf for several years during one stretch. I've been using it a lot in the last several years though. It always amazes me how some kitchen tools will languish for a while before being used again. I keep thinking my old pasta maker will have to come out again some year. I don't remember the last time I used it.

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  10. Hi Daphne, good morning! That's so true about tools sitting on the shelf. In my case I was "in transition" for 7 years... we were in a very little house where it was difficult to do canning/preserving.

    Yes! Break out that pasta maker!!! I want one!

    About your mom's birds. I was thinking of doing the same thing with chickens... creating a run around the garden. Thanks for the feedback about your mom. Do you get home to visit every so often?

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  11. Those jars do look cute with the different colored contents. You're making me want to go out and buy a dehydrator.

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  12. Hi Cheryl! I got my dehydrator at a yard sale. Maybe you could pick one up 2nd hand! It sure is handy!!!

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