We are getting 38+ for the rest of the week, and today I picked the last of the collards and some lacinato at midday to get a little extra Vit D. I undid two now empty hoop houses, also to avoid rickets. Billme will live to be 200 with that kind of diet, though I should not be far behind (being landlocked, my shrimps off the boat is stew meat off the freezer). I have a little sense that the weather is breaking (already?). This sense led me to fix everyone's bike (3 of 4 bikes were flat), took my mushroom logs outside too, which is quite the upper body workout. I am going to seed some lettuce and cardoons and celery in trays tonight. To me, mache is just fine with olive oil, vinegar and salt, and a top salad green, too bad it takes forever to pick a bowl.

The best thing about a plant addiction is that it is self-limiting. As the number of plants increases, eventually you run out of space, time, or energy. And even if you don't, the plants have a way of declining as they compete for limited windowsill spots, or when they are so close together that the bugs have a little highway to zip from pot to pot. So, unless you are unusually involved, there is likely to be some natural attrition. I'm addicted to plants, no doubt about it. But I tend to cycle and collect plants in a certain family. After several years, I've mastered the culture for those, or else I've decided they don't work well in my conditions or they are simply too darn fussy. Then I give them away, or throw them out, or leave them outside too long in the fall until they freeze. After about a year, I start obsessing with a new plant family. My first love was african violets. Then big foliage plants to fill space when I was younger and couldn't afford much furniture. Then fancy foliage plants after I started working for a plant company and fell in love with all the exotic, expensive ones! Then pond plants. Then hibiscus. Currently getting into orchids. I can really relate to marquest's comment, "I have to own every plant at least once before I die." I guess I'll live a long time!

Oooohhh, I haven't had one of those brownies in a long time...may need to try them again :) I remember a looonnnggg time ago in my hippie days growing a large crop of that special "lettuce" in an old car that broke down. Used to clean out some seeds from that lettuce and some must have fallen on the floor. The car broke down and was parked out in the back lot...months later there was lots of green stuff growing! It made the perfect greenhouse. Wow we had an awesome party that night and the next and the next.... Too bad the lettuce I have growing in the basement is not the special kind. I wouldn't want the fuzz to come down on me LOL. Kim Here is a link that might be useful: Check out my blog!

Barb -- Even as an instructor, I've always found home canning to be an expensive method for food preservation if you have to purchase the food, and especially if you have to purchase canning equipment. In the home canning class I teach, we do cost analysis charts so people get a better idea of the true cost. Not to mention the hours of food preparation it takes from garden to the table. I used to break down the cost of utilities, but it changes periodically, and now there isn't just one cost, it varies throughout the day, so I don't bother with that anymore. It's not worth my time and trouble to plant, care for, harvest, and process 8-10 pints of pickled beets (about the average we would use in a year) when I can purchase them for 67-cents per can. That's one of the few commercially canned foods I buy. It's expensive for the cost of the utilities to process home canning, and for the extra energy to cool your home with an air conditioner while you process it. Do you have the kind of stove you can do home canning ON? Are your burners large enough (size and B.T.U. out-put) for the size of canner you are using? For a LOT of reasons, freezing or dehydration is a less-expensive choice for home food preservation. I also believe unless you have access to fresh-picked produce in the amounts it takes to fill a canner, you are probably wasting your time AND money because it means your home canned food won't have much in the way of nutrients after the delay from picking until it's canned if you have to wait several days to get the large amounts you need. It definitely doesn't pay to only fill a canner with a few pints/quarts when it takes nearly the same amount of energy to process a canner that is full. I also think most home canned foods are inferior when it comes to nutrition due to the lag time from harvest to processing, as well as from the heat processing, and how long and under what conditions they are stored in. And not everyone likes to eat home canned food.... Most of my friends and most of my students now can a favorite family recipe or two and jam/jelly/apple butter for gift-giving. Dehydrating takes very little energy, other than what it takes for blanching (but not everything requires blanching). I place my dehydrator in the basement where the heat it produces dissipates quickly. The exception is onions, which I do in the garage because of the smell. Kale can get a bit smelly, too. Dehydrated foods takes up less space than canning. It's amazing how many dried apple slices or dried tomato slices you can stuff into a canning jar!!! The FoodSaver product you are considering is fine for what it's designed for, but I think you would be happier with one of the full-size units which are more expensive. I have one of those small units and rarely use it (purchased it at Tuesday Morning for $19 several years ago), while I use the regular one many times each day (and have been using them since 1986). I'm into home food storage and have a whole room in the basement filled with vacuum-sealed dry goods. The FoodSaver is the center of my long-term storage, so it's a must-have for me. I have a new one, still in the box, I purchased on sale, ready to go if the current one quits. My entire freezer is organized with vacuum-sealed items, because they last longer in the freezer. No more freezer-burned food! I can pull out a plastic storage basket and flip through it for vacuum-sealed fruits or vegetables, all in a single layer in the bags. Cut the bag open, remove the amount needed, and reseal the bag and put it back in the basket in the freezer. I freeze soup/stew/chili in serving sizes. Pop it out of the freezer container, stack the "cubes" and vacuum-seal them a FoodSaver bag. Take out what I need and reseal the bag. I have all our breakfast meat in serving amounts and vacuum-sealed. I divide bulk amounts of chicken, and other meat products, into several bags and vacuum-seal it - both raw and pre-cooked. My pantry shelf is lined with foods in canning jars of various sizes. Instead of standing them up-right on the shelves two and three deep, and having to move them to see what's in the back, I lay the jars down on their side with the lid to the front. I have my shelves adjusted so they are the distance apart of one 1/2-gallon jar space (which is the largest jar I use). I spray painted the lids with chalk board paint, and I use a chalk board pencil or liquid chalk board markers (in fun electric colors) to mark the chalkboard lids. Some jars are covered with plastic Ball jar lids and you can write on them with liquid chalk markers. Not all of these are vacuum-sealed, but many are (especially those that contain freeze-dried foods). So my pantry is lined with canning jars filled with dry gluten-free pasta, dried and freeze-dried fruits and vegetables, baking aids like cacao nibs, chocolate chips (several kinds and sizes), chia seeds, palm sugar, arrowroot, whole grains and homemade cereal products, crispy nuts (soaked and dehydrated), pinto bean flakes, dried parsley..... And even more in the food storage room. You will have to determine whether a FoodSaver will meet your food storage needs and goals. -Grainlady