I love beets. Especially ones fresh from the garden then roasted. Then there's Harvard Beets and pickled beets. I've been craving roasted brussels sprouts, but neither husband nor dd like them...dd used to, but now she's so anti-mom she's sworn off lots of stuff she used to like. Grits I learned to like when I was in Grad school in Billsburg, VA. I liked to go to the Chickahominy House to have a Virginian breakfast: eggs over easy, a slice of Virginia ham and grits, with a buttermilk biscuit. You could have redeye gravy, but I preferred to smush my eggs into the grits. Then there's egg/cheese/grits casserole. Cornbread is best slathered with butter, or drizzled with honey. I rarely do both anymore, but I used to. I brought rolls for the trip to MI to have Thanksgiving. I was up until 2:00 am on Thursday making them. I intended to make whole wheat "brown and serve" rolls, but I didn't hear the timer ding, and so in a panic, I baked them completely so I could taste test and make sure they were edible (they were, although some were big enough to be hamburger buns). For the young fry I made PIllsbury crescent rolls...as I know that dd and others prefer those. On the way home today she was munching on one and said "Oh, what is is that makes crescent rolls so yummy." "in a word," I said, "lots of fat." I have to say that driving up to Hastings, MI on Thursday morning was wonderful. A typical Michigan Thanksgiving day--misc. flurries and the sun breaking through glowering clouds over golden and russet fields which had been lightly frosted with a diamond dust. Breathtaking.

Welcome Rena,you will never do house work again,WSing is so additive. Oh wow, green already, congratulations!At 5 pm, it is still light out,happy,happy,happy. Mary, I have used the small soda bottles before, you can tape them all together, like a 6 pack, just one piece of tape all around will keep them from falling over,they work good enough,great if you are only going to sow a few seeds. Have fun,not matter how you do it, just throw them caps away. cAROL

I will eat liver of almost any sort...but I would prefer not to be the one that cooks it. But that is as far as I will go with organ meats. But now that I have read the part about "the liver cleans everything in the system...I like to know what's coursed through my organ meat", I may never eat it again. And this statement also made me rethink how much I love Rocky Mountain Oysters. LOL I will not eat any wild game. I have tried many different game meats...deer, elk, raccoon, bear, possum, duck, rabbit, wild boar...the list goes on. I am just not crazy about that "wild" taste. And it doesn't matter if it's been soaked in milk or whatever else they try to de-wild it with. :) I will also not eat tripe or sea urchin (had one in our salt water aquarium and just can't feature that). *shudder* I won't touch tuna...from a can, raw or otherwise. Tuna from a can looks and smells just like cat food to me. And when we were little, my older sister was responsible for feeding us dinner. She made tuna noodle casserole over and over and over. She was 10 and no one taught her (or any of us) to cook, so she is forgiven. We were even known to have saltine crackers crushed up in a bowl with Kool Aid on them. And most other fish is not appealing to me. Shellfish, however, is another matter. And milk. I will not drink milk. I read once that humans are the only mammal on Earth that drinks milk past the weaning stage. Milk is the one thing that will make me gag should I consider raising a glass to my lips. And watching someone else drink it? Ewwww SHUDDER. However, I will cook with it. Weird...I know. Other than that, I will eat just about anything and will at least try just about anything...once. I am sure I will think of something later that I won't eat. And we were raised by a step dad that forced us to eat everything on our plates. Everything. I never, ever made my kids eat something they didn't want to...and they are great eaters now.

Marti, in my thread about the master suite you said you liked the beadboard as used there. So I wanted to respond to that here in your thread. My house is an old style house, not as new as yours is. So I think that beadboard was a part of the pre-ranchhouse city house. In my case, I count myself fortunate that I don't have to consider it an anachronism out of place in this simple house. Our porch had a beadboard ceiling, all separate boards. It was hell to seal between the cracks when we enclosed it as our sun porch. And painting it was a real pain, overhead for three coats of semigloss paint. With a brush. In the master closet, we left the existing exterior stucco wall on the bumpout, removing the windows and casing them out as two doors so we'd still have the support for that wall with the stud between them. The new walls and the 8 foot ceiling were all beadboard. The carpenter/framer bought all the wood and was putting it up when I discovered it, where I had planned on wallboard for the walls, only a ceiling of beadboard. BUT, I figured "it was meant to be" and so I went with it. I painted the beadboard semigloss white all over. With a fuzzy roller too, and took my time. I think that the bathroom with mostly beadboard everywhere, except in the portion where plaster ceiling existed in the old bath, looked appropriate because of the clawfoot tub and the 2 inch mosaic tiles (a uniform color). Other than the tub and the beadboard, and the old stained glass window, the bath has modernistic touches. Toto washlet seat on American Standard 1.6 gal flush toilet, a square sink, a square faucet set, vertical sconces, square Kohler mirror, polished nickel or polished chrome hardware in general. My house is a melange of styles, which I feel is consistent with it evolving over time. Up north, the basic little cape started out as a small two room house, and was added on to as able or as required. In that same way, I figure that people tied to the land, and to the house, have always allowed their homes to evolve. A seashell starts small, and keeps adding on to its shell, and it looks different at the outer rim than the beginning parts, but it is a beautiful and organic design. So surround yourself with what pleases you and feels right.