As our big summer purchase this year we bought an Excalibur dehydrator. I'm really glad we did. So far we have dried Sweet 100 tomatoes to make "tomaisins", veggie and tomato chips, fruit leather and pepper/tomato spicy blend.

Tomaisins are one of my favorite snacks, a fact DD, Lydia, thinks is weird since I don't like fresh tomatoes at all. What can I tell you? Each little tomaisin is amazin! Sweet & tangy like concentrated summer sunshine in snack.

The chips we made for Brian, since he is on a low carb diet and really misses chips. These are great with tzatziki sauce made with greek yogurt and a fresh cucumber for dip or with salmon cream cheese spred.

Lydia has become the queen of fruit leathers. She started out simple with peach. Which was all eaten up in a matter of days. Her latest creation is blue berry, banana and coconut milk. They are Henry T.'s favorite finger food.

Last week we picked all of the ripe peppers: Hot hungarian, sweet banana, alma paprika, jalepeno and bell. We dried them until crispy along with a couple of handfuls of Sweet 100's until everything was crispy. Then we threw it all in the blender and gave it a whirl. We wanted to try it as a rub so we kept it going until everything was powdered.

Brian and I tried it on lamb chops this week -DELICIOUS! Just the right amount of heat balanced with sweet. And it was so easy. I just put some of the spice blend and a little garlic powder in a zip lock bag and shook it up. Then it rested in the fridge over night.

Brian pan fried the chops. I'm not allowed to cook meat, 'cause Brian says I rush it too much. Ok by me. That's one cooking job I get out of. Besides Brian does a grand job getting just the perfect color/temp.

I'm looking forward to making more pepper blends, maybe dehydrating some of our onions to toss in too. Hmmmm....