Last night I was working on my seed catalog order while my husband watched the news. I was writing out locations for each little crop when a teaser for the next segment came up talking about how the mortgage crisis wasn’t even half over, and that there was a new wave of mortgages that they had never heard of that were about to hit.

Well, I had heard of them. Why the heck was 60 Minutes (linke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shYJ_KkbzWg&NR=1 )trying to say they hadn’t heard of the Alt-As? I’d known about them, maybe because we lived in Florida during the massive frenzy and I had seen all the ads. No money down, 3% teaser rates for three years… I had a friend go for one, getting himself a half-million dollar home while he was self-employed and the company wasn’t making any money. Another was what they called “NINJA” loans - no Income, No job, No assets - but they’d loan out the money anyway. No-doc loans - meaning you didn’t have to prove anything. I could have borrowed $100,000 on my little business, and never shown a single tax statement from the past few years.

For some reason, I had mentally put these loans in the same category as the sub-primes. Knowing the Alt-A’s teaser rates were probably coming due starting a year ago (as my friend bought his home four years ago), I thought some of these were already coming due and were part of the same crisis.

Apparently not so. And, the largest wave of these is expected to hit in 2012.

So much for a short-term crisis with a recovery in 6 months to a year, folks.

Not that I really had much hope for that. I really didn’t - I’ve been trying to brace for a depression for a few years now, but sometimes, hearing how someone thinks it will be a year helps to raise hopes a little bit. For myself, my gut instinct says we are in for the next 6 years, and recovery will be slow.

This is scary. Really scary. I have too many friends that are already hurting, people whose spouses have lost their jobs, friends who are not counted in the nation’s unemployment rate because they lost their job 6 months ago. Friends who fight about money constantly. And one friend whose 4-year-old son asked if he could get a job to help his dad make money. The same child offered up $1 of his allowance to help the family have fun on vacation. “Talk about making a grown man cry,” he told me.

I’m not saying all of this to be depressing. I do my best not to get down about the economy because there’s only so many things I can do: I can take care of myself and mine, and help whomever I can along the way. To that end, nearly half of my backyard is being turned to vegetable and herb gardens. I’m saving seeds from fruits and vegetables we buy, and I and working that clay all winter - adding everything I can to it - to make the best possible crop of veggies I can out there this spring and summer.

When I was a kid, my mother often made my clothes. Most of the dresses I wore to school were handmade. I liked this, until other students at this private school (who were probably jealous and whose parents probably both worked) said I must be poor, to have my mom making my clothes. I’m sure hearing this hurt my mom’s feelings, but she did still make some of my playclothes. I had a favorite, lemon-yellow shirt that she had copied off of another shirt that we had bought - she made it a size larger, so I could wear it longer. It wasn’t that my parents couldn’t afford to buy clothes - sewing was mom’s hobby as much as it is mine now (probably more). But it’s also a wonderful skill to have, especially in difficult financial times. Clothes now are often so cheap it’s easily worth it to go to a yard sale to get what you need - the hard part is, a lot of times those clothes originally came from Wal-mart or Target and fall apart after a wash or two. The old vintage stuff is the best - tried and true. I still wear one of my husband’s flannel shirts from when he was a kid - it survives, year after year, wash after wash.

Still, it’s good to be able to stitch together your better clothes. The coats and pants and party dresses. It’s also great to be able to make the accessories for your home. I made our curtains - all of them. I’ve made tablecloths and runners, napkins and placemats, bags and purses that never go out of style because they never ARE in style to begin with. And I never throw scraps away - there are nearly always things you can do, even with those pieces. If you can’t sew, learn. Now. Learn a new skill - knitting or cooking or gardening or something - anything - that might help you in the lean times ahead.

Hang on to every dollar you make now, folks. You may need every penny pretty soon.

I know, I already mentioned the holidays once. Get used to it for a little while, ok?

Since moving here three years ago, we haven’t bought a tree. In my family, it was always a real tree, in hubby’s, it was the same fake one. Growing up, we always got a Douglas Fir the day after Thanksgiving and decorated all weekend. It was always an 8 foot tree at least, because Dad has always needed to look “up” at the tree because of course, you did that as a kid, and Dad is over 6 ft tall.

So anyway. Our first Christmas here, we cut down a scrubby little tree that was growing in an overgrown section of the backyard that was going to get removed anyway. It was our Charlie Brown Christmas tree, and it was fun, if really shabby.

The second year, we didn’t have a tree.

Last year, I took a tall potted palm tree (a drachena), wrapped it in lights and a few select ornaments, and called it our Florida tree. [I looked for the pictures but haven’t found them - once I do I’ll add them in]. It was fun, but not what I want yet.

I’ve considered the beer bottle tree - surely you’ve seen that email floating around during previous holidays - a “tree” made from green beer bottles all stacked up in the shape of a Christmas tree. Only… we don’t drink beer, we’re winos, and even if we had saved all the bottles we drank this year, they wouldn’t be enough to build a tree out of. And, we oughtn’t forget, we live in a Baptist community where drinking is a terrible sin - putting a stack of empty bottles in our window might cause more pastors to come knocking on our door.

Our ceilings are tall, and I did inherit Dad’s desire for a tall tree. I’ve also come to like skinny trees. For all the height of our living room, the house is not very big and a wide tree would expose what I have so carefully tried to make seem otherwise - but I have yet to find a fake tree I like!

I might be making one. I’m open to suggestions. I’ve considered finding a decently long tree section with bark, buying cast-away fake trees at yard sales, and drilling and gluing the upper branches into my log to create the tall skinny tree. Sort of a borrowed idea from those fake Ficus trees that were so popular 15 years ago. I figure I can fit the bottom into one of my galvanized buckets, painted red, to ensure stability.

Other than that, the Drachena might be up for the fun again. Though, I might be better off decorating an old wooden ladder than having a repeat performance like that. Small town, I’d rather keep people guessing. Ha!

I love the holidays.  I love the parties, the decorating, the yummy baking and good cooking and the fact that I can hide the inevitable weight gain with bulky sweaters. I love the crispness in the air, the music everywhere, and the smells of woodsmoke as people light up their fireplaces at night.

What I don’t like is the blatant commercialism of the holidays. Every year it seems the stores are putting out their Christmas trees earlier and earlier - Target had two isles dedicated to Christmas at the end of August - and I was there looking for tiki torches for a summer party! Not a tiki torch to be had, either.

All this commercialism has made the holidays a financial nightmare. It’s too easy, even on a budget, to find yourself charging $2,000.00 on your credit card just for gifts for everyone. The holidays shouldn’t be about digging yourself into debt and waking up on January 1 with a hangover and a stress attack as the bills come in.

That’s not what the holidays are about. Not that long ago, gifts were handmade - and if they were bought, there was usually one gift for each child - not 10 or more and one BIG gift.  So, as often as I can, I make presents for my friends and family. Last year I made aprons, other years I have made placemats, ornaments, painted Santa Claus figurines, formulated dry soup in a jar, and given out herb sachets. The hardest part, of course, is finding the time to do these things. I always intend to start making presents in September so I have all of December free to dedicate to baking and fun activities like stringing lights in our trees outside.

I haven’t started yet. I’ve known what I’m making for just about everyone for several months, but haven’t managed to create the time to sit down at my sewing machine and get started yet. Pretty soon you’ll see the light in my art space on pretty late at night. Come December, I’ll have the holiday music on to help light a fire under my kiester to get faster at them.

So what are you making this year?

Everybody’s talking about Wall Street.  Every morning we all read the news to find out what bank collapsed today, check on our IRAs, 401Ks and our stocks to see what kind of money we have lost now.

I feel terrible for all the people who have lost lots and lots of money lately. All the good, hard working Americans who have been dutifully giving half their paycheck to their 401K or IRA, only to be watching that money disappear now. Many of them were probably about ready to retire. We heard about all the folks after Enron collapsed and felt for them - this is bigger than Enron. Heartbreaking.

More sad are all the people who have been foreclosed on, or who have had to walk out of their homes and hand the bank the keys because they couldn’t make those payments after the rates increased on them. For many in Florida, it wasn’t just that their mortgage payments doubled, but so did the cost of insurance, electricity, gasoline and taxes. A person can only take so much.

Even my little neighborhood in my little town has seen foreclosures. One was a lovely family that was struggling after their third child was born. Now they’ve moved in with her mother, the house sits empty, and the grass is two feet tall - this is hard to see after knowing how he always worked to keep that yard so neat and tidy. I miss seeing the kids playing in the backyard, and the mom sitting on the swing on the back porch, watching them play. You don’t often see children playing outside anymore, or a parent willing to watch them. It’s just really sad.

Which brings me back to my topic. What’s all this running around for, anyway? We in this culture work hard in school so we can get a good job, where we again work hard so we get noticed by the boss and get a good raise so we can afford a big house and a nice car and all the trappings and start a savings plan and put money away so we can retire and finally enjoy life. We are barely ever home with our kids, we are barely home to enjoy the homes we work so hard to pay for. And we eat processed crap because there is no time to make a real meal. We’re tired all the time, we take Ambien to make us go to sleep and drink a quart of coffee to wake us up.

Who designed this treadmill?

A friend and I were out riding our bicycles and I was talking about how I am taking a break from doing jobs I don’t love but that pay well and instead doing things I like and being a little broke, but happy. I said I felt like life was too short to run around and work my ass off instead of enjoying life. Don’t get me wrong - I’m definitely working my ass off between four jobs, managing a garden, cooking meals, keeping house, hanging laundry on the line, making as much as I can around the house and processing food for winter. But I love it. I really do. My rewards are many - I love, love being at home. It’s all these little intangible things, like seeing how the sun enters my kitchen in the Fall, something I’d never seen before. And other things too - like the self-reliance thing I talked about a few posts ago. I don’t feel dependent on consumerism to make things work at home, I can make them.

Back to the bike ride, my friend says, you know, it took her until she was 50 to realize that she would never be a millionaire, would never have a maid to clean her home, and that life was slipping away from her. Part of the influence in her realization was her parents. They worked until they were in their 70s, planning on doing lots of traveling when they retired. They retired and… they were too old to travel anymore. All that work and saving, for what?

Which is probably what a lot of people who are sadly watching their portfolios shrink are asking too.

I’m not saying “live for today and spend all your money” - but I do think we should live a little bit, each day. I’ve realized now that I know how much I love making fresh dinners and growing my garden and fitting in that bike ride a few times a week, I just can’t get a full time job. I would die inside from knowing what I am missing.

This treadmill that our culture has created over the past 70 years - getting us off the farm or out of small towns where the cobbler fixed shoes or the baker made bread - and instead making us work for faceless companies that barely know our names and could outsource our jobs to India or China at a moment’s notice - is empty. Is this what life should be? Working our lives away and being so dependent on buying our clothes, our pre-made food (ick?), big houses, nice cars, and having to watch our paychecks go right out the door for a mortgage, a car (or two), daycare (because we have to work), lawn maintenance (because again, we have to work), a housekeeper (because we can’t work full time AND do the deep-cleaning)… is this really living?

Maybe this setback in the economy is a chance for us to re-evaluate what is important to us. Maybe we don’t need a big house. Maybe we don’t need the Hummer. If we downsize, maybe we can afford a small home and not have any payments in a few years. Maybe both parents only need to work part-time, and can spend time with the kids, enjoy the yard we mow, take walks or ride our bicycles to the store or the post office. Maybe we could help our teachers, or get involved in an aspect of the community, plant gardens or take up hobbies and sell our creations online. Maybe we don’t have to hate Monday morning anymore.

If we think about it, maybe it can be done. Maybe we can have our cake and eat it too.

A friend and I were talking last Friday evening about the potential upcoming Depression. It seemed unfair to be a little doom and gloom on such a beautiful day – it was sunny and clear, and the cooling breeze was almost chill. Weather for throwing a party and putting good food on the grill. But the talk of the day was still last Monday’s 504 point drop in the market, and the tax burden of the president’s bailout plan.

My friend, of course, is the very epitome of frugal. Look up “frugal” in the dictionary and you should see his picture. But what we were discussing was how, if one is already accustomed to being frugal and a major economic downturn does hit, then it isn’t a major lifestyle adjustment and one doesn’t feel deprived as a result.

Even better, we agreed, the people who have been frugal all along, who have been canning and gardening and cutting firewood and coupons, the people who have been making new clothes out of their old clothes and only buying what they need when it is on sale, will be there to help folks who haven’t had to learn that lifestyle before. They can take their friends and neighbors by the hand, and say “it’s ok, this is how you do it.”

I’ve learned a lot this summer, and it seems the Internet has been my friend for learning how to can, freeze or dry the summer’s vegetables and fruits. I’ve taken to leaving the laptop in the kitchen so I can look these things up and not get distracted from the work that needs to get done because I can’t see it from my office computer. I’ve had a busy summer, a good summer, learning all of these things and experimenting.

With my hands this busy, I haven’t missed going to the store. I have a self-sufficient happiness to me now – a feeling that, no matter how bad the economy gets, I can heat my house, dry my laundry, sew my clothes, grow my food, and preserve it. I have made my own medicine for minor discomforts and general health. I can even cook if the power has to be turned off – the top of the woodstove is big enough to hold a few pots and pans. I have a good feeling, knowing that so long as I can grow things in my yard, no matter how bad the economy gets, we will not starve. We may not have a lot of variety and we may even have a weed salad from time to time, but we won’t go hungry. A year ago, I would have had trouble telling you what weeds we could eat and how much of them was safe to consume at a time.

I don’t feel deprived because I’m not buying cereal at $6.00 a box or decorating my house with the latest cool stuff at Target. I have lots of projects, and I have such a satisfaction knowing that our credit card bill is slowly shrinking because I’m not buying… I’m making.

Remember college? Especially if you were putting yourself through, and had to eat off $3 in change for a whole week? Remember not having more than five pairs of pants and just a few tops to go with them? For a girl, I wasn’t terribly interested in clothes back then. Thanks to a couple of roommates – one with a massive load of credit card debt from shopping and the other who frequently got financial gifts from The Bank of Dad – I knew how far behind the styles I was. I had to be creative with my money and adopted a comfortable, boyish look – jeans or cargo pants, t-shirt, ponytail. Clothes were just not important – I was in college to study, right?

Since then, for a long time, I have enjoyed getting new clothes. I’m not a big shopper by any means, but I do like having some nice things that are in style. My closet is full, and so is a whole dresser devoted just to me (my husband also has a whole dresser and a whole closet, but there is less hanging in his closet than mine). I can deliberate for half an hour over what to wear. I spend hours sorting and washing and line-drying laundry every week, and we don’t even have kids!

About a month ago I was in our attic sorting through some boxes for a yard sale when I came across my favorite bag from college. It is a WW2 map bag, sized like a small messenger, with loads of pockets in the front for pencils. It had been the perfect size for a couple of textbooks and a notebook, and had been easy to sling over my shoulder as I hopped on my bike to ride to school in the morning. At some point in recent years my dog with the nervous disposition had chewed the strap, and I had stopped using it.

I’m back to using it now. I washed it and took it to my overloaded closet and pulled out a beaded belt I’ve worn maybe three times. It was easy to tie it to the strap rings, and I’m super thrilled to have what feels like an old friend back. I haven’t bothered changing purses to match my outfit since, and have gotten more compliments on my bag than I usually do with my favorite Liz Claiborne.

I’ve realized I can be creative with that strap. I have lots of scarves I could tie on it instead of the belt – I can make the bag “go” with my outfit anytime I so choose by changing its accessory.

If I can do that much by being creative with a bag, what can I do with all the other stuff hanging in that closet? New ideas and ways of thinking are starting to sprout. Maybe my creativity hasn’t entirely left me after all.

This year, I have only bought 5 new items for my closet, and I did that this Spring before I decided not to buy any more. I’ve come to realize that what I wear does not matter. It can be last year’s jeans and the sweatshirt from 10 years ago with my alma mater emblazoned on it. What’s wrong with continuing to wear that teddy-soft t-shirt with a few holes in it while I am home? And even if someone did come to the door, they’d know they came without calling me first. Most people dress for comfort while at home.

Many people don’t bother themselves too terribly much about how stylish your clothes are. Jeans and cargo pants have been my uniform for decades, I just forgot that while trying to impress clients with my Ann’s Taylor and Klein. I’m regressing back to my college days of dress, just a little less sloppy and a little more fitted. The people that do care? If what I wear, being three years out of date, bothers them so much that they no longer want to be seen with me, then are they really people I want to know? Why should I continue to spend money to impress people?

For myself, it isn’t that I want new clothes so much as I don’t want to be perceived as being poor. We look at each other and assess their value based upon what car they drive, what neighborhood they live in, the square footage of the home, and how many Maholo Blahniks are in the closet. We look at the jewelry our friends wear, the style of their haircut and color job, their nails. They’re all measures of status, and whether you are worthy of people’s attention falls on your appearance, not your education or all the things you have accomplished in your life.

It’s a consumer culture, and my closet is going to keep what it has in it for a looooong time.  Maybe I can sell my other bags on e-bay.

It’s funny how we suddenly remember cool things about our childhoods and there seems to be no logical reason as to why it would come up - but I’m glad this one did so I can share it.

When my brother was little, we had tons and tons of crayons, some of them just little bits left over from my heavy use of them years before. My brother loved to color, and so we had a whole tin full of bitty crayons that were hard to hold and impossible to sharpen.

Didn’t faze my mom after she clipped an article from the Boca News about putting all those crayon bits into a muffin tin, then melting them over low heat in the oven for a while. The bits melted together, making easy to handle crayon “cookies” - perfect for my brother’s chubby little hands. The colors would be all mixed up (not blended) so you could have one crayon cookie and have red, green, blue and yellow colors to work with. No more griping because one kid had the blue crayon. I think in the next batch we put warm colors together so red, yellow and orange would be on one cookie, but the first batch was plenty fun to play with still.

I’m not sure if she had to grease the muffin tin first. They all had nice neat edges so they apparently came out just fine. If they do stick, I think the same trick that works for getting the melted wax from one of those scented wax burners would do the trick - put the tray in the freezer for a few hours. Pops right out!

P.S. - freezing wax works well for anything it’s stuck to. Place an ice cube over a spot of wax on your tablecloth from that last fancy dinner and the whole drip will come up with very little coaxing.  No mess, no stain. Ta-da!

I originally wrote this post for www.unofficiallyoptimistic.com, so forgive me for the cross-post but I feel this is useful information. You can find many recipes for home-made laundry detergent all over the web, and doubtless some of them are better than mine - but I thought the harmful chemical information good to have as well. Making my own detergent hasn’t been just about saving money, but about keeping harmful things away from me and water. I pass on all softeners too - they aren’t really needed!

Here is a list of just some of the chemicals found in fabric softeners and dryer sheets:

• Benzyl acetate: Linked to pancreatic cancer
• Benzyl Alcohol: Upper respiratory tract irritant
• Ethanol: On the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Hazardous Waste list and can cause central nervous system disorders
• Limonene: Known carcinogen
• A-Terpineol: Can cause respiratory problems, including fatal edema, and central nervous system damage
• Ethyl Acetate: A narcotic on the EPA’s Hazardous Waste list
• Camphor: Causes central nervous system disorders
• Chloroform: Neurotoxic, anesthetic and carcinogenic
• Linalool: A narcotic that causes central nervous system disorders
• Pentane: A chemical known to be harmful if inhaled

Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t appreciate chemicals like Pentane that is harmful if inhaled being in my laundry. I mean, what’s one of the most natural things to do when you get something out of the dryer and it’s all soft and warm? I know, especially in winter when it’s cold - you put your face in that warm laundry and inhale. haha. Cute.

You can find a list of other toxins added to laundry detergent and their effects on humans here: http://www.ourlittleplace.com/chemicals.html

To make your own detergent, you need the following: Borax is Hydrated sodium borate, Na2B4O7 -10H2O, is a mineral ore of interlocked chains of boron, hydrogen, oxygen , water,and sodium. It is often found in dried playa lake beds. A playa lake is one that fills with rain water then dries out leaving various salts.The simplest refining method is to boil the ore in water, add carbonated soda which causes the borax to dissolve and impurities to settle out. The water borax mixture is poured off and cooled, borax crystals form and are collected. Borax is a water softener, cleanser, whitener and disinfectant.

Now, borax CAN still be harmful. But at least in making my own laundry detergent, I know exactly how much of it is IN my detergent.

Then washing soda, I use Arm & Hammer brand, and Fels Naptha soap (you can use unscented Ivory too).

Shred the whole bar of Ivory, or only 1/3 of the bar of Fels Naptha, into a large pot that you don’t cook food in. Add six cups water, heat it until the soap dissolves. Then add 1/2 cup of washing soda and 1/2 cup of borax and stir until it dissolves. Remove from heat.

Pour 4 cups of hot water into bucket. Add the soap mixture, stir. Add 1 gallon plus 6 cups water and stir. Let sit 24 hours. It will get up… into a weird sort of egg soup mixture. Use 1/2 cup per load.

The site I got the recipe from had even broken down the costs. It costs roughly a penny a load to use this stuff, and you have about 2 gallons worth to work from. I find it lasts us a few months.

You can add scent to this as well - just add one ounce of the essential oil of your choice before it gels up. Favorites include: peppermint, lavender, lemon grass, and orange essential oils.

I just bought a bike. A good bike, a bike that can take me long distances. But not a good bike for grocery shopping or hanging around town. I need a rack on the back, and I need it to be old enough that theft is unlikely and if it did, I didn’t spend more than $30 on it anyway. I’ll probably cover it in greenie stickers to make a great theft deterrent anyway.

The buzz on bikes to reduce gas mileage for local runs makes total sense. Not only can you leave the car parked in the drive, but you can cancel your gym membership too. Bicycling is great cardiovascular activity, health insurance plans should offer a discount to people who ride 20 minutes or more a few times a week (in that case, my health insurance should be nearly free because I spend about 11 hours a week in the saddle and about 3-4 more hours walking, and I don’t pollute my body with bad food, but that’s another post).

Now, for anyone else who’s thinking about finding a bike for this purpose, what are you looking for?

Some of it will depend on your local terrain. If the lay of the land is very flat, then you can get away with a fixed-gear bike (meaning, no shifting, just one big cog and one little cog). In my area, I need at least a few gears because we have a few hills.

The next thing is, you’ll likely want fenders in case it’s wet out - nobody wants roadwater splashing up their back or all over the goods sitting in the rear basket. And brakes - front and back - because you never know when you’ll need to stop quickly.

From there comes the fun! There are a multitude of baskets and panniers available. In my case, for grocery shopping or running local errands like dropping packages off at the post office, I’d need a good secure basket in the back - something like this: http://www.tahoemountainsports.com/store/folding-bike-basket.shtml.

But you can still be cute too - they do make wicker baskets for the front still, such as this one: http://www.tahoemountainsports.com/store/kruzer-baskets.shtml. And really if you have a rack on the back anyway, you can likely locate a wicker basket that will fit on it for the back as well - maybe just by taking your new used bike around the neighborhood garage sales.

You can also MAKE your own panniers, see this site for great ideas on using old cat litter boxes (um, clean first?) or surplus army bags. I think with a little creativity, you might find other things around the house that would make great bags for your bike - old purses, lunch boxes or bags, school backpacks, etc.

Bells are not outdated either - they warn people at fairs and streets of your presence. You can even put up a fun flag to increase visibility and make a statement. Ribbons, stickers, paint… there’s nothing wrong with getting a little artsy with your new mode of transportation!

A few weeks ago I bought a used dehydrator for veggies and such. After reading through the book that came with it, I must say I am so excited to have this thing! I was initially only thinking of drying tomatoes and all kinds of herbs with it, but did you know, I can make “fruit leathers” (like Fruit Roll-Ups) too? As I read, I kept getting more excited. I can make crackers. Trail mix. Dry all my herbs with no fears of mold or mildew. My own energy bars for my 40+ mile bike rides…

This thing is going to get some serious use.

So on to Expriment In Drying #1: “Sun” Dried Tomatoes.

I have all kinds of great Roma tomatoes coming in, some larger on certain plants than others. A few plants have consistently been producing fruit that isn’t much larger than a cherry tomato – perfect for slicing in half on a salad, or for drying. So as hubby and I got dinner in the oven, I set to cleaning and slicing up several dozen tomatoes. I ran the machine for about 10 hours. If course, you do have to flip the screens, and the fruit, about halfway through to ensure even drying, which involved me getting up at 3am to fulfill this task. If I were smarter, maybe I’d pick a day I was at home and do this during normal waking hours, hmmm?

Not all of them were perfectly done though. The ones that were nice and crispy-rubbery dry I put into a bag. The others were really close to being finished but not quite – those I put in a jar with olive oil, some salt, some vinegar, and some herbs and put in the refrigerator. They should be really good in a few days in some pasta. I don’t want to keep them very long out of fear of Botulism or something awful like that.

Sun Dried Tomatoes #2

This time I sprinkled some salt, garlic powder and oregano on the tomato slices before drying. They smelled fabulous, my whole house smelled like good Italian food for hours. The results did not disappoint either… WOW are they good! Hard to not sit there and snack on them like a bag of potato chips. Then again, why not?