WHEN I WAS a kid - back in the 1950’s – there was only one option for saving your tomatoes: canning them. It was hot work and time consuming, but our mothers and grannies did it. Now I save my harvest in easier, better ways.

Canning tomatoes or sauce is still good, but freezing whole red tomatoes is easier – and, from what I’ve read – preserves more of the vitamins than canning. That’s right: instead of slaving over a hot stove in August and September, I make my sauce as needed in the off season from fruit I freeze now. Canning sauce entails cooking the tomatoes and herbs, putting them in clean canning jars, and then keeping them in a hot water bath for 45 minutes (for quart jars). All that cooking breaks down some of the vitamins and uses lots of energy.

Freezing whole red tomatoes is easy: wash and dry your tomatoes and put them in the freezer. You can put them on a cookie sheet first, or directly in gallon zipper bags. I prefer freezing them directly in the bags – it’s a one-step process. I use a standard milk straw for sucking air out of the bag when it’s 99% closed. That helps to minimize frost inside the bag.

Dehydrator When I need a few tomatoes for a recipe I take out a few frozen tomatoes and run them under hot tap water. I rub the skins and they come right off. I let the skinned tomatoes rest for 5 minutes to thaw a smidge, and then cut them in half. I cut out the stem point and chop up the tomatoes. Put them right in the pan and they act just liked canned tomatoes.

Another technique: Drying them. I grow a lot of cherry tomatoes that I dehydrate to make something like those sun dried tomatoes from California that are sold in fancy stores for a small fortune. I cut clean cherry tomatoes in half, and place them cut-side up on the trays of my food dehydrator. I set the thermostat at 125 or 130 degrees F and dry them for about 24 hours. Although my machine would do it faster if I pushed up the temperature, vitamin C breaks down more quickly at higher temperatures. Once dried the tomatoes are safe on a shelf for quite a while, but I usually keep them in zipper bags in the fridge or freezer.

Tomatoes on the vine A few words about dehydrators: I’ve tried 4 different ones, and have settled on the NESCO American Harvester ‘Garden Master Pro’. It’s the Cadillac of dehydrators, but not pricey – you can get one directly from the manufacturer for $140 or so (www.nesco.com or 800-288- 4545). It has a heating element, thermostat, timer and fan. It is round, and has stacking trays for the veggies. Buy the “Cleana Screen” inserts – they make washing much easier. Its only downside? It uses 1000 watts of electricity per hour, so I only use it for large batches.

I also dry fruit, hot peppers and garlic. Apples and pears I slice into quarter inch slices and dry for snacks all winter. Don’t over-dry your fruit, however, or it gets so hard that chewing it is a struggle. Leave it a little chewy.

Hot peppers I do dry until brittle so that I can make hot pepper powder with them. When fully dry I put them in my coffee grinder and chop, seeds and all. By making a powder I can use as much – or as little – as needed, depending on who is coming to dinner. I process garlic the same way as peppers, making a garlic powder that stores well on the shelf.

Since, knock on wood, it appears we will have a great tomato harvest this year, I will also make a lot of tomato paste and maybe even some ketchup. To make paste I first core tomatoes and squeeze out some of the juice and seeds. Then I cut the tomatoes in halves or quarters and put them in food processor and puree them. I let the puree simmer all evening until it is literally thick enough to stand up a spoon in it. I turn off the heat and let it cool all night without a lid to evaporate a little more.

In the morning I spoon the paste into ice cube trays. When the paste is frozen I pop out the cubes and store them in zipper bags in the freezer. I like storing cubes instead of quarts because I can use a small quantity whenever I want - and not have paste left over in the fridge picking up flavors or getting moldy. Muffin tins would work, too, I suppose, particularly if you don’t fill them up to the top. Paste is good for tomatoes that have bad spots – I cut out the defect and throw the good parts in the blender.

One word of caution when freezing: be sure to use ‘freezer grade’ zipper bags. The storage bags are flimsy and don’t store your food as well over the long haul. It’s worth the few pennies extra to get the good ones.

Even if you didn’t plant a forest of tomatoes this year you can store tomatoes for the winter. Just go to your local farm stand and ask if they have a special price for canning tomatoes by the bushel. Most do, and it’s worth the effort to put some away.