Hi Bev, no, actually, I forgot all about it til now.(age showing) But thank you for reminding me, I will need to re-visit this,and get busy. I am having so much fun with the cats,I would encourage you to do what ever you can,to plant for the butterflies,they need our help,you will not regreat it.Good luck Bev.And thanks for reminding me. cAROL

Hi Cocoa, I know, I know. Everyone took time to write me lovely replies and I've been so busy that I have not had time to go back and respond in the way that I want to. But I will this morning. :) The tropical shrub is called Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Brunfelisa). Each bloom starts as deep purple. The next day it fades to lilac/ light purple and on the third day, it turns white. Hence the name! The color is truly purple, not blue, and you can see more photos of my shrub from a few years ago at the link below. I have two. The one in the photos I planted 10+ years ago on the northeast corner of my home. It was in full sun for the first few years but after I planted the crape myrtle bed that you can see in front of it, it is in part shade/part sun. It seems to bloom as well either way. It is a reliable March/April bloomer and the blooms last around a month. It is a beautiful plant, year-round and bonus - it is evergreen! The second one has been in the ground for about four years and is on the southeast corner of my home. It is just to the left of the white column of my front porch and you can see it in three of the pictures in my prior post. The plant usually sells for $12.99 - $19.99 in nicer nurseries, depending upon the size. I have not seen it in the big box stores yet. It is a very hardy shrub. I do not cover or protect them... but they are near the house and under the crapes which provides some protection. We hit a low of 23.5 this past winter (Jan 7) and yes, this plant tells you it did not like it one bit. It throws all of its leaves on the ground the next day. It is kind of funny, because the leaves do not turn brown, or slowly fall off, they are literally all thrown to the ground, green! Just like someone who had stripped off all their clothes. I will go outside the next day and say, "Ok, I see that you are not happy". But just as funny, it will regrow those leaves faster than I have seen any plant rebound. I'm talking mere 5-7 days and the leaves are coming back. I do not ever water (once established) and fertilize occasionally with an all-purpose slow release. I also do not trim or shape, except to remove branches that grow out into my pathway. It is a slow grower and that has worked just fine for me. It is very, very difficult to root from cuttings. I have suckers come up from the roots occasionally. I very, verrrrry carefully remove then and try to transplant to pots or a different place in the ground.... no. They pout and pout and sometimes never root at all.. They also put out seeds after the blooms and I haven't had any luck with them. I have never been able to successfully root a cutting. That's it! A great, hardy, reliable shrub that everyone will notice in the spring! Here are some more photos: I'll start with "Cranky YTT" taken March 6, 2010. You can see the new green leaves already coming back! Here is the same shrub, a month later: Here is the second YTT, planted June 27, 2010. This is at the end of my front porch. Some closer pictures of the blooms: Good luck! I hope you can find one easily! Carol in Jacksonville Here is a link that might be useful: Brunfelsia (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow)

Made some lemon sauce using Clear Jel which was canned. After a year or so, it started to seperate, with the thicker part settling to the bottom. Even though Clear Jel is more stable than regular corn starch, in this application it didn't do as good as I expected. I looked into it further and found out that if the ietm your thickening is very acidic, it tends to break down the Clear Jel. Some months ago, I went to the American Starch company and looked at several formulations of modifie food starch. I was surprized at the fact that there are quite a few varieties. Some of made specifically for high acid foods, while others are made to hold up to freeze thaw cycles. In these cases, I had requested some of these specialty strach products and found that they do work better than the more general purpose Clear Jel. Only problem is, these specialty starches are hard to find in small quantities, so my free samples were all I could get. Looking further into thickeners, I found Freezer Flow, rice gluten, and a few other thickeners which are supposed to be suitable for home canning. Today, I made turkey pies from the left over turkey. I used Freezer Flow as the thickener for the gravy/sauce. I also added some partially cooked diced potatoes, cut carrots, frozen peas, limas, string beans, and corn. Made the pies in throw away aluminium Au Gratin pans, and lined the pans with pie dough, as well as a top crust after each was filled.

You're fine with the recipe as written. That's an Ellie Topp recipe (She develops for Bernardin also.) and there's enough acid already with the red wine and the red wine vinegar. If you want to pressure can, as Annie said, there's no reason not to. Just follow the usual procedures: vent time+processing time+wait time and use the boiling water bath time to process at 10 or 11 psi (weight or gauge). If anything, it will be even more foolproof that way. I haven't made that sauce the last couple of years. And this year we have almost no garden thanks to cold weather and lack of bees, so it looks like it won't be happening this season either. Sigh. Carol