This is my setup. I have a 12 qt stockpot with a spagettie cooking insert. It is like a steamer instert except that it goes all the way to within a few inches of the bottom of the pot. I fill a cooler with cold water and add a frozen jug (gallon) to help keep it cool. I keep my second 12 qt stock pot near by, my insert fit in both pots. I have the tomatoes washed and ready to blanch. I get the water at a full boil, put two layers of tomatoes in the bottom of the insert and lower it into the boiling water. Once it returns to a boil, I boil for 1 mn and then pull it out, let the water drain just a bit and put it in the second stockpot. Give it just a bit to drain, and then take the insert out and dump the tomatoes into the cooler of water - I keep it right beside the cooktop so I'm not hauling hot tomatoes or dripping hot water across the floor to the sink. Then I put in more tomaotes, and when the water has returned to a boil. put the instert in and start over. And I keep doing this until I've got all the tomatoes blanched. I do enough for 14 qts (two canners full) at a time. Once I'm all done with the blanching, I pull a chair up the cooler with a couple of containers, grab a tomatoe and peel - dump the peels in one container and the tomatoes in the other. Once I've got a container full, I move to the counter and cut them up depending on what I'm going to use them for. Then I return to the cooler and refill the container. I usually cut them up into my big container that holds 12 qts - use that and another to get the 14 qts I need (plus some to add for packing). I usually cold pack with no or little juice added. I bought that pot at a kitchen outlet store, paid under $50 for it and I use it for all kinds of blanching/boiling for canning - any time I need to pull produce out of hot water!

Steaming means that when you hit their burning skin/hair with water to put out the fire, the water turns to steam and burns them more. It is the reason you won't see a firefighter spraying water on a burning animal to put out the fire, and it is tough to see. That's why I turn away--I cannot bear to watch it. The first time I saw animals on fire (armadilloes and possums), I begged the firefighters to spray water on them to put them out, and they said "Can't do it. It will kill them." I think they probably died anyway though. There is nothing near me. Are you kidding? Even a trip into Marietta takes 30 minutes round trip and that's just if you're popping into a gas station convenience store for a cold drink. Other than whatever is in Marietta (which in terms of shopping is not much), we have to drive 30 miles north or south to reach any decent shopping destination,and by decent I mean something like Wal-Mart. That sounds like a long way, but when we first moved here we had to drive 50-60 miles to get to a Lowe's or Home Depot. We also had NO cell service within 2 or 3 miles of our house, and no internet service. We had to buy a DirectPC satellite dish to have the internet. Our then-15-year-old son thought we had moved to a foreign planet. Eventually cell phone service moved closer to us. At one point we had cell service if standing down in the road 300' from the house, then eventually we had cell service in the living room of the house but no farther, and then finally anywhere in the house, but not north or west of the house. Now we have cell service everywhere on our property. See how we're moving on up to the big time? Eventually we had dial-up internet but it was painfully slow after having had DirctPC. However, it only cost maybe 1/3rd as much. Now we have (hallelujah!) wireless internet. You still lose all cell service when you get pretty far out west in our county, although a new cell tower was supposed to solve that. I haven't been out west since it went up, but someone who has been out that way said it was not the solution they said it would be. Once you get far west in our county, even the fire/police radio reception can be spotty, and I don't like that. Don't get me wrong. When we moved here we knew it was very rural and very remote, but the lack of cell service and internet service was a little surprising. Because we're in a lowlying area, Channel 12 was the only tv channel, period, that we could pick up and that was spotty and with a big antenna. So, we got DirecTV and still have it. Sometimes you have to give up some modern conveniences in order to live way out in the sticks. I am grateful every day for internet shopping and UPS. It is so much easier to order stuff and have it delivered than to drive 90 or 100 miles one way looking for it. The nearest Baskin-Robbins I can think of, by the way, is in Denton, TX, and I am not even sure if it is still there. There's a Braum's in both Ardmore and Gainesville but both are sort of off the beaten path and we rarely go there. During the dry months we leave Love County as little as possible because there's nothing worse than being 30 miles from home when the fire pager goes off. It makes Tim crazy and it is hard to get him to patiently wait while I finish the grocery shopping, for example, before we head back home. The fire either will still be burning when he gets there, or it won't, is my attitude. A couple of years ago we were in Lewisville shopping for a new treadmill and started getting phone calls and text messages urging us to hurry home because there was a big wildfire. We did. By the time we reached Denton, TX, we could see the smoke plume from the fire in western Love County, but we kept thinking it must be from a closer fire in Cooke or Montague County. We probably were already between Sanger and Gainesville before we realized that the smoke plume we'd been seeing since we were east of Denton was from our fire. That was a fire that took several days and all the departments in our county to extinguish it fully. In the summer or winter fire season, any time we leave home, we have a 'to do' list and hurry, hurry, hurry to do it and get back home. To me, it is a thrill to get to spend 4 hours in Denton without rushing back, but that only happens a couple of times a year. We'll eat lunch at a real restaurant, walk around the mall, maybe browse the bookstore. It is like a vacation, albeit a brief one. I am not complaining, either. One day of dealing with traffic and crowds in the D-FW metroplex and I'm ready to stay home for the next month. I love living in the country for many reasons, but shopping convenience is not one of them. Dawn

I love your clematis, it's very striking. Looks like Too Hot to Handle is very well named, it just seems to glow and almost jump right out of the page. I like Silverado too.

Here's my recipe, from my Mom of course. I'm guessing at the amounts, cuz I just do it my taste and consistency, but lets say you're doing a dozen eggs: Miracle Whip, not mayo: 3/4 to a cup (that's a guess, start small, you can always add more) Finely chopped sweet pickles: 2 tablespoons A little of the pickle juice: 1 tablespoon Just a small squirt of yellow mustard: 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon Sugar: 2 teaspoons to start From here it's just how sweet you like it, and use the type of pickles you like the best. This is the same "sauce" my Mom used for potato salad too, only she added celery seed to the mixture. Hope you like.