i shall have my glory day in the hot sun

I did a little bit of experimenting yesterday.  I bought a silpat over the weekend and had recently viewed a show on pbs on how to make tomato "powder" using your oven (to dry out the tomatoes).  So, I sliced some tomatoes super thin and then laid them on the silpat and stuck them in the oven at about 200 F, maybe a little less.  Let that go for about 6 hours and voila!  Dried tomato slices.  Ground them up in my coffee grinder (the one I only use for spices, of course) and got about 1/4c yield of intense, tomatoey powder.  the show I was watching that explained this process recommended sprinkling it over pasta or salads.  I seasoned some chicken breasts with it, along with salt and peps and then wrapped the chicken breasts in bacon and baked them.  It was really good and kinda neat.  The tomato flavor was there, without the tomatoes.  I also will be trying this process with other things in the near future (onions, citrus fruits, etc).  I think that there are a lot of possibilities with this technique.  The potatoes in the picture are called scotch stovies.  It's basically potatoes cooked with onion, thyme, celery leaves, s&p, and water.  really tasty, simple stuff.  the celery was a nice addition to the potatoes, wife found it refreshing.  likewise.
I had every intention of working on the book today, but i am super tired.  I hope I can find the inspiration soon, but right now, I need some zzzzz's.  peace.

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