My Dehydrator Disaster!

Well I promised...so here it is.  A tale of dehydrating disaster.

The harvest had begun.  Tomatoes were ripening.  One here...three there...10 lbs now...35 lbs again!  Can you imagine that this was only the begin of the tomato season?!

Here at The Lotus Centre we're creating a living foods kitchen.  And we're soon to launch a living foods detox program.  And that's why we planted tomatoes in our urban garden.

In fact, we planted 12 rows of 8 feet of tomatoes which are scheduled (as if you can schedule Mother Nature!) to ripen at varying times.  Uh huh.  Well, now's the time.  To preserve the life and freshness of the tomatoes I chose to dehydrate them.  Yes, dehydrating tomatoes ensures that they last throughout the winter.  Simply add a little water and...voila!  Tomatoes ready for soups, salads and more.

Now one would think that I had thought it all out.  You know...how many dehydrators does it take to get ahead of the tomatoes?  One would think...one would be wrong.  So I borrowed 2 dehydrators plus had my own 9 tray Excalibur plugged in.

Now for any of you who have prepared 35 pounds of tomatoes for the dehydrator, you'll agree with me that it's a fairly easy process.  Wash, slice evenly, cut off stem end, place on tray, fill dehydrator, turn on dehydrator, wait 24 hours and remove from dehydrator, bag and store.  And it is.  So what happened?

On Thursday of the week in question I arose, came down to my living room (where else would one dehydrate 35 lbs. of tomatoes?) where the dehydrators were just humming along.  It certainly had the aroma of tomatoes...warm...a little basil thrown in here and there.  Yum!

Off I went.  To network, to work to play...whatever.  I arrived home late that evening and went right off to bed.  On Friday morning, Amy, my beautiful daughter went out the door to the Lotus Centre, John had already left with Kyle and I was playing a little early morning hookie.  Luxuriating in the bedroom reading my book (contemporary romance...aka trash novel) I realized that time had slipped away from me.  I showered, dressed and all but flew down the stairs - almost late for an appointment.  And then it hit me.  The tomato smell.  Yes, smell.  We'd moved beyond the wonderfully aromatic tomato/basil combination to the stench of rotting tomatoes.  Ugh!

I approached the dehydrators and nearly slid into the table holding them as my foot slicked through tomato juice.  On my floor.  Hardwood, I might add, in my living room.  Fun?  I think not!

What happened?  Well at the time I had no idea except that one of the dehydrators had not turned on.  So...in the 30 degree heat my tomatoes had a lovely layer of white fuzz entirely covering them.  Yum yum.  What a mess!  The floor hosted a puddle of maybe 30cm x 30cm of wet, molded tomato juice and I had an entire dehydrator full of rotted tomatoes.

It took me a little while to clean it up.  Gulp!  Like an hour.  So I chose my hardwood floor over my appointment of the hour.  Thankfully the woman that I ditched in favour of moldy cleanup was very understanding.  She too had hardwood floors.  Though I'm fairly certain she'd never had a litre of molded tomato juice spilled on it!

Now I was a little concerned.  I thought that I'd broken my friend's Excalibur dehydrator.  Poop.

Well my friend came along and collected her machine.  Never heard anything from her so I made the assumption that it worked at her house.  I guess it didn't like my house.

It seems that the explanation is a might bit less mystic that this.  Last week (2 weeks after said disaster) I was explaining to John that it was a bit odd that the machine didn't work for me.  He asked me where I'd plugged it in (and yes, for those of you wondering, it was indeed plugged in!).  As it turns out that particular wall plug is turn on and off by a wall switch!  Now wouldn't it have been nice to have known that in advance??!!

That's it.  No biggie.  Just a mess and a lesson learned.

In any case, the tomatoes don't stop ripening - go figure!  And all told to date we've collected over 120 lbs from our garden.  I'd say the harvest is about 1/2 way complete.  We are gloriously abundant this year - thank you Mother Earth!

I must sign off now as 62 more pounds of tomatoes are awaiting their turn in the tomato sauna!