My Attempt At Being Self-Sustaining

I recently finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. It's a fantastic book, that's kind of a memoir, but also provides a lot of useful information about eating seasonally and locally. After finishing the book a few weeks ago I've been inspired to try my best to eat as locally and as seasonally as possible. This provided me with a bit of a problem as well. You see, I live in a city. A city that is mainly concrete. So yes, I'm sure you can see how this could be problematic. Kingsolver herself lives on a farm with a reasonably large plot of land where she grows many varieties of many different vegetables, along with fruit trees and her own heritage breed turkeys. Being ever so crafty, I've managed to grow a tomato plant, some sweet peas, some peppers, herbs and carrots on my tiny little balcony. I've been eating and enjoying my very minimal bounty over the past few weeks as well. Of course this is not remotely enough food to sustain me over the months so I must head to the Liberty Village farmer's market every Sunday morning. This month I've been loading up on breads, tomatoes, broccoli, potatoes, okra and onions among other in season foods.
Come winter I'm thinking I'll probably have to do what I usually do most winters. Which is to go to the chain grocery store and buy veggies and fruit that have travelled a gazillion miles in order to get to the store and to my canvas sac. But Kingsolver says that it does not have to be that it just doesn't have to be that way, even if, like me, you live in a city of concrete where as soon as fall ends, the farmer's market closes up. Canning, freezing and dehydrating are all great ways to save all your farmer's market bounty.
So, I gave it a try. My good friend Evan, who when it comes to cooking, is one of the best I know, gave me a recipe to try. Sun-dried tomatoes! Now let me tell you, I just love sun-dried tomatoes. Being the weirdo I am, I have been known to eat store bought sun-dried tomatoes straight out of the bag, as a snack! So when Evan gave me the recipe I knew it was one I couldn't just push aside.
His recipe called for roma tomatoes, cut into thirds lengthwise with the seeds and juices removed. Toss the thirds with some olive oil, fresh rosemary, minced garlic, salt, sugar and pepper. Then throw them in a single layer on parchment paper lined sheet pans and into the oven at 200 or the lowest setting and let them hang out in there for about 7 hours or until dehydrated completely.
I adapted the recipe a little bit to suit my needs. The farmer's market lacked roma tomatoes so I made do with some bright red, and very sweet, medium sized ones. And as I had for the first time in many years ran out of garlic, I made do with out those as well.
In my oven, it took about 8 hours for the tomatoes to dehydrate the way I was happy, but man was it ever worth the wait. And all over again, I am eating them straight out of the mason jar! There is just the right amount of balance between the sweetness and the saltiness. And the rosemary gives it a beautiful hit of extra flavour and fragrance.



Although this is one recipe that will help me preserve my food over the winter in my effort to eat locally, I am a bit worried. These tomatoes are freaking delicious and I am going to go through every batch I make in a matter of days I am sure. And like I said, it's only one... But I suppose it's a start!

Take care!