sundried tomatoes FTW!

I love to cook, I love to eat things I've made myself and aren't processed.  I think it just tastes better, and I get a real satisfaction from doing it. It's cheaper too, especially if you're organised.  I really enjoy preserving things when they're in season, so I can use them all year round or give them as gifts.  I've hoarded hundreds of glass jars for this purpose, as well as using my big chest freezer.

At the moment it's tomato season - they're 99cents a kilo at the Sunday morning market... so last Sunday I bought 7.8 kgs of tomatoes and turned them into:

Yep, that's a hella lot of sundried tomatoes.  I made enough for 11 jars - just did two for now, with the rest to go in the freezer in jar-sized packs to top up the jars when they're used up.  They're just in oil.  Two jars = 1 for me and 1 for Mrs Possum.  The rest are in my freezer, Mrs Possum has no space.  
Cost me $7.80 plus $5 for the oil.  Plus 20cents for the drying rack.  Plus probably $5 for all the gas it took to cook them.  Given that jars of sundried tomatoes are about $7 each, I've saved $59 on all these tomatoes.  I know you're thinking that I could just have normal tomatoes, and that would go a long way and so your calculation about saving $59 is a bit off... but me and Mrs Possum LURVE sundried tomatoes, and you only need a few of them for heaps of flavour. So I'm cool with that.

If they're still cheap next week, I'm going to get heaps more and make pasta sauce.  Courgettes are 99cents a kilo too, I'll get those and put them in the sauce for bulk.  Noms. What I'm really looking out for is cheap red peppers (less than $2 a kg) so I can make roasted capsicum sauce. It's like tomato ketchup, but tastes like roasted capsicums.  It's truly delicious.