2023 wrap-up

The garden is finally put to bed, although the weather continues to be pretty good and there is no snow in sight. I spent most of October processing the harvest and trying out new ideas with the dehydrator.

We had a tonne of tomatoes so I pureed them and then put them on a piece of parchment paper in the dehydrator. The result was very stiff fruit leather (did the same thing with some apple sauce but did not dry it as much). It took about 8 hours of drying time.

I then crumbed it into pieces and ran it through the coffee grinder to make tomato powder, which works as a substitute for tomato paste.

Four plus litres of tomato paste dehydrated to about 175ml of powder!

We also dried a bunch more peppers. 

Seven bell peppers turned into about 1.5 cups of dried peppers.

So far I have jammed four gallons of raspberries. There s one gallon left but I need a break.

We carved the giant pumpkins for Hallowe'en. They were thick! Lots of seeds to roast, though. And I saved a few seeds. Jess and Jenn have also been making pumpkin pie out of the eating pumpkins.

I think the decoration in the middle was supposed to be a pumpkin but it turned out a bit Eye of Sauron.

That pretty much wraps up this year and I'm turning my mind to Christmas baking. The fruitcakes (some doused with whiskey and some with malibu) turned out well.