Been feeling a bit poorly the last couple of days. Special thanks to Stephanie and Robert who helped so capably with the Preserves class of Tuesday. While I rested up yesterday, Robert went out to the cooking school and finished processing the apricots for me. Excellent.

That just left the tomatoes. I kind of over-estimated the quantity needed, so this morning I decided to fill up the dehydrators. Here they are sitting on the bench, all loaded and dehydrating away. I’ll be interested to see how each performs against the other with respect to dehydrating times.

The BioChef – so far only used to rise bread, holds a very large number of tomatoes. It has a drip tray in the base, very handy for cleaning purposes. The fan is at the back.

Next in line to the left is my Fowlers dehydrator, old faithful. Its capacity is also good, but sometimes the juices drip down and under the covering plate of the fan, which is situated on the bottom. It’s served me well for decades though.

Baby of the bunch is the little Sunbeam, picked up for a mere $20 at Eaglehawk Neck Market a couple of years ago. The fan for this one sits in the top. It will be slower with dehydrating the tomatoes for sure because the motor is less powerful, but I know it always gets the in the end, quite satisfactorily.

In the meantime, they sit on the bench looking a bit like the three bears in a dehydrator kind of way……

Oh yes, and in case you note all the paraphernalia in the background, as the sign on my fridge says in my defence “It’s not a mess, it’s a creative environment.”