I see readinglady "came to the rescue-again" as she remembered where to buy those little tea bag stuffers. She is an amazing lady - my hat is off to her for all of her many contributions to this fine forum. I also have some older coffee filters - left from an upgraded coffee maker that might work just fine. Will try that too. Of OT interest (again) the silica sand mentioned - in Ken's post - is harvested not far from here - an old bed of hardened skeletons from sea creatures millions of years old, which is located about 4 miles from the ocean. They also call it diatomaceous earth - and gardeners use it to thwart slugs and snails in the garden. The sand has hard sharp edges that perforate the snail/slugs body. Home Depot also sells it as a blasting sand, used in construction, because of it's cutting properties (removing old paint, etc). Just my 2 c's. (sorry). But I do want to use dried tomatoes for paste anyway - this summer. That's a cool idea and in a small way, helps to eliminate the problem of whether to use bottled lemon juice in my tomatoes - saves on canning jars, freezer/shelf space, etc. Bejay

Depends on the kind of cherry, some are quite sour, some are slight sour and some are slightly sweet, then sweet. They need to have the pits removed and then dried in a dehydrator. Usually once the moisture is taken away they will sweeten up slightly in most cases. A dip into a sugar syrup after pitting and allowing them to soak over night then dried, may help. Commercailly dried ones sometimes add corn sugar, corn syrup, or high fructose sugar which are basically the same, but differ from cane sugar, as you would use less of them. Cranberries are treated like this as well, and they may spray a light coat of oil on them to prevent too much sticking together.

Eileen, all you have to do is pick all your green ones, bring them in the house and they will all ripen/turn red. You can also pull the whole plant out of the ground and hang it in a garage or barn and they will all continue to ripen. To encourage ripening on the vine outside, discontinue watering. I don't know if you could dry green ones (can't see why not) but they sure would be bitter and I don't know what you would use them for. You could use fresh green ones for salsa verde or fried green tomatoes. Earl, smaller types I slice length wise. Bigger types, stem end down to bottom. I grow only paste types so few seeds, which I remove most of. If you are using tom's with a lot of seeds, you should probably remove them as they get pretty bitter. And I know seeding tomatoes (other than in a squeezo or something) is a huge pain-in-the-butt! Cutting slices that are the same thickness is important because then your slices will dry at a similar rate of speed and you don't have to keep picking through the trays on the dehydrator taking out the ones that dried the quickest. Also, I have a commercial dehydrator so mine has 1/2" metal squares. I spray the trays with pam to avoid sticking. Most home dehydrators have teflon trays but if not, the Pam works really well.

Pat, I'm glad the brownies were a big hit with your boss. Ann