Drying up

It was an amazing year in the garden. As usual, I had grown my tomatoes from seed, and this year, my seed success rate was beyond average, which meant I had to find homes for more plants—either out in the world or in one of my many garden spaces. We had a fair amount of rain this spring (tomatoes love to drink) and then lots of high heat days (tomatoes love the heat). I planted about 25 plants (give or take) in 15+ varieties, from Pineapple to Black Krim and Sungold to Rosella. Most of my seeds come from Baker’s Creek. I put my tomatoes out very early (March), using Wall O Waters for insulation. These are just awesome, by the way—might make my top five favorite garden tool. Everything was a bit slow to ripen this year, but once it got going, it was unstoppable. An endless supply of gorgeous, multicolored, perfectly ripe tomatoes flowed into our kitchen, and eventually I couldn’t keep up, no matter how much bruschetta, burata salad, horiatiki, and fresh tomato lasagna I made. We pivoted to making sauce to freeze, and that helped for a while, but eventually, I needed another tomato outlet, and I bought myself a dehydrator.

My first experiment was with cherry tomatoes, which I sliced in half and doused with fresh ground garlic and hand-dried oregano. As usual, I consulted a bunch of recipes and then combined what made sense to my tastebuds. Some suggested the addition of olive oil, so I tried this on half of my tomatoes, with no discernible difference in results, so I would recommend skipping the oil. I popped these in to the dehydrator cut side up and set it at 135° Fahrenheit for about 6 hours. at the 6 hour mark, I flipped the tomatoes over, checking dryness as I went. I was looking for stiff, unsticky tomatoes—those would be my signs of readiness. Nothing was close to ready yet, so I set the dehydrator for another 6 hours and came back to check when that time had elapsed.

At that point, many were done, and some needed more time. I ran the dehydrator once or twice for two hours to get all of the tomatoes to the finish line.

Some recipes recommend a more “leathery” texture, while others push for fully dried. The right “doneness'“ depends a lot on how you plan to store and use the tomatoes. If you want shelf-stable tomatoes, go for fully dry (stiff, crisp, unsticky). Likewise, if you hope to make tomato powder (ground up dried tomatoes that you can sprinkle on anything for a super tomatoey flavor) go for fully dry. If you are open to storing the tomatoes in your fridge, packed in oil, and you are confident you’ll use them quickly, you can aim for a leathery texture instead. The advantage to leathery is that it takes a bit less to rehydrate these tomatoes. I decided to go for fully dry but to freeze the tomatoes just in case I had a few with too much moisture remaining. I’m envisioning popping these dried tomatoes on uninspired frozen pizzas, into salads, or onto pasta. Since my proposed uses will each contribute a fair amount of moisture to the tomatoes, I’m not worried about the tomatoes being “too dry.” I’ll let you know how these work out over the winter months—and share more dehydration adventures soon.

Making candles for vegans and others.

It turns out making candles is easy and fun. You can do it! You’ll need a candy thermometer, a double boiler (with a top pot that you are okay never using for food again), wax (lots of choices, I will discuss more below), wicking material (again, choices from cotton to hemp to wood), something to stabilize and adhere the wick with, something to pour the scented wax into (like a glass jar), essential oils, a clothespin, and about 30-60 minutes. I’m sure you can find a billion videos of how to do this, so I’m not going into every step. Instead, I’ll share what surprised me so you have the inside track on what the videos may not tell you.

1. Soy vey. Truth be told, I am not a vegan. I enjoyed working with the soy, which melted beautifully, but I am actually more concerned about GMOs than I am about whether it’s okay to use the stuff bees make. I’m sorry about that, vegan friends. I think you guys are great. And I actually love bees and work hard to make an incredible haven for them in my yard. But I feel okay about using their wax. And I might prefer that to soy because, while you cannot get soy wax that is organic, you can get beeswax that is organic. And I am passionate about voting with my dollars for crops that replenish the Earth. So I may eventually shift to beeswax and see how I like working with that.

2. Fragrance balancing. There’s a science to creating a fragrance for your candles, which is grounded in the concept that a balanced fragrance consists of three elements: a top note, a middle note, and a base note. The top note creates your initial impression—it’s likely what you smell first, but it dissipates more swiftly than the other two scents. Your middle note (sometimes called the heart note) will have a steady presence that emerges more strongly once the top note evaporates. Finally, your base note has a heavier molecule that is slowest to evaporate; this scent lingers even after the candle is blown out. You can search for lists of which fragrances fall into which of the three categories. I personally found that I generally favor top and heart note fragrances over base notes, so I had to improvise to find a combination in which all three categories were represented. For my candles, I chose bergamot (top note), rosemary (heart note), and ginger (base note). I was pleased with the richness and depth I got from playing these three against each other.

3. Melted is melted. The directions I followed had very specific temperature goals for the wax in the double boiler. After some experimentation, I found I could be quite a bit looser. If it looked clear and melted, it was good to go.

I really enjoyed this project and encourage you to give it a try—or invite you to purchase one of my candles if you’d like to see how mine turned out.

I love making stuff, okay?

Look, I don’t know what it is. I just can’t help myself. I am endlessly curious about how things are made, and I can’t help but try to do it myself. If there’s a kit to weave baskets or a you tube about drying flowers or a local class to pour candles, I want it. And holy crap do I want the tools, too. I want the best broom knife and the most accurate candy thermometer and the sewing machine with all of the bells and whistles. I want the hori hori that makes all of the other hori horis cry. So I’m just going to go with it. I’m gonna make stuff, and I’m going to write about it for other people who like it, too.