*chuckling* Well, not a head chef by any means, just a Southern cook with a large family! Black eyed peas I will cook fresh, frozen or dried. They cook the same way with a couple small differences. After rinsing fresh shelled peas, I'll add water and simmer them for an hour or so until they are tender. Seasonings to taste, a little sauteed onion, maybe a little bell pepper, perhaps a little bacon or ham for flavoring. I also will just drop a ham bone into the pot. Frozen, the same, though the temp starts out lower and they simmer a little longer to give them time to thaw completely. Dried, depends on when I'm starting them. If the night before in my crockpot, I will just add the water and everything else, put them on low and let them cook all night and the next day. Check the water and how done they are first thing in the morning to decide if they need more water and how much longer they need to cook. We like ours just tender, but not mushy. I have a crockpot that I can set the cooking time on, after that, they just stay warm until we get home and are ready to eat. If I'm cooking dried for that evening, I'll get my tap water as hot as possible, drop the beans in and let them soak, keeping the water at a simmer to gently rehydrate them. Then I'll bring the heat up and cook them. While I was between crockpots, I use to get the tap water as hot as possible, drop the peas in and cover them overnight to let them soak, rinse them, then start cooking them the following morning. Notice that the only real differences in the way I cook them is whether the amount of time and whether or not they'll need soaked. Serving them, there are a lot of different ways- peas and corn bread, pea salad, a spoon of peas on a green salad, etc. Most dried beans can be treated the same way, though different beans and peas need different cooking times, may not need to be soaked, etc. Kidney beans, for example, I add beef or mixed beef/pork sausage to and let it simmer with garlic, onion, bell peppers and cayenne pepper, a few other seasonings and dried herbs and serve with rice- I grew up in SW Louisiana :)These I let cook a little longer because I want it to form thicker 'gravy' that coats and clings to the rice. You can combine several different types of beans/peas to make bean soup. English split peas make a lovely creamy soup and there are several recipes for them. Swiss Chard and collards I like to do the greens like I do any other greens. I'll either Southern pan fry them (which is more wilting with a very little oil) or use them in scrambled eggs or omelets or in salads as fresh greens, or on sandwiches to replace lettuce or stir fried with other veggies and perhaps a little chicken . All of these retain the nutritional value (yes, even the wilting, especially if you sop up or drink the pot liquor. Keep in mind that all leafy greens will shrink as they cook and wilt, so you will need what seems like an enormous amount is you're cooking them. Cow peas I'm not as familiar with since we don't care for them much, aside from the purple hulls- these I do like black eyes. Hot peppers can be used a number of ways. If they are big enough, they can be stuffed and oven baked or deep fried. My family likes cream cheese and cheddar to stuff them with, perhaps a little diced mushroom. Stuff them, then sew or tie them shut with a little turkey twine (you can find this where ever your store sells cooking gadgets)We also use them in salsa and in just cooking a variety of things. We also pickle them with vinegar and use the juice after it's set for a couple months in beans on the plate to taste. You can also grind them, add some vinegar and make home made hot sauces. You can also make pepper jelly or pepper chow chow with them. Sweet peppers- banana, etc, I will often use as I would any bell pepper. A different flavor, but I often use them the same. I'll stuff and bake them with ground meat and rise or the cheese mixtures, I'll even stuff and serve them fresh - stuffing often depends on the size and how much time I have. They're also great cut fresh for salads, in Mexican dishes, with sandwiches, etc. Another way is to take your hot peppers and add banana peppers for pickling. This will give you the banana pepper flavor, with a little heat and kick! I've also pickled them by themselves to preserve them for the winter. I've dehydrated them in my oven like I do tomatoes (my alternative to sun dried tomatoes)After dehydrating, I'll make a dried salsa of tomatoes, a variety of peppers, garlic, onions and toss it all together in a freezer baggie. In the dead of winter I'll have homemade salsa with the addition of some lime juice, a little warm water and fresh cilantro from my window. I've used both sweet and hot peppers cut into strips and grilled (or pan grilled) to use for fajitas. Larger peppers can be oven or grill roasted, similar to garlic, and added to a variety of dishes. I don't do a lot of winter squashes, we prefer summer squash, which I freeze in abundance and use a variety of ways. DH's Aunt pickles the winter ones, but I'm not as familiar with them except for perhaps Hubbard, which I've had baked. Hopefully someone else will chime in with ideas for many of the things your asking about and will have more info on the winter squashes. Pumpkin is one that I am familiar with. We bake the pie sized ones into pies after preparing the puree. We've also stuffed and baked the smaller ones with a variety of things- ground beef and rice.. apples pears and brown sugar with a bit of nutmeg. They are rather versatile. And of course, there is roasted pumpkin seed! These are a favorite for my kids and they will eat them by the handful! We'll do them several different ways- tossing with a little olive oil and sprinkling with cinnamon, salt, a dash of red pepper, tossing with a bit of honey, ranch dressing mix, or Italian seasonings- these are fun to experiment with! The larger pumpkins, especially if they're thicker and tougher, chickens and livestock enjoy a lot! Horses adore melon rinds, but be careful to make sure they're ripe and to give them as a treat. Sometimes the rind can cause colic in horses. I'd check with my vet first about the type of melon. Whew! That got long and I was tying to just give some ideas and not get into *all* the different ways I prepare these things! We eat a lot of veggies, fresh and preserved in one way or another. The kids really enjoy taking a handful of over dried cherry tomatoes and snacking on them like most kids do potato chips! I'm hoping some of the others will chime in too! I'm always interested in learning new ways, or ones that I know about but am not as familiar with, to preserve or prepare the veggies I grow. Ask away, Nichol! And everyone else, please jump in! I want to learn how others preserve and prepare! LOL, a lot of the things I do are things my grandparents and Daddy taught me and are wonderful, but I'm always looking for new or different ways! Kathy

hmmm, epimediums. These are very addictive. I have managed to remain sane, having just 4 or 5 but my son has succumbed completely. Geums are also another potential plant opiate - yah know, you get a couple but you are still in charge. Then you get a couple more and start to take notice of different cultivars. Pretty soon. you are scouring the web, out of control. You start to hide them under ferns and plot secret stashes in distant corners of the garden.....oh yes, it starts out so innocuously. Epimediums are gorgeously fascinating and beautiful but astoundingly tough, useful and rewarding. However, if you have even a tiny bit of the plant obsessive gene, then epimediums can easily rival a rose mania. Heucheras and heucherellas are, fortunately, a bit duff in my sandy soil but regardless, one must have them. The star of my garden at the moment (apart from my lovely new hellebore) is a chaenomeles superba - it is a true scarlet with none of that rather nasty coral tone so common to flowering quince. It lives up to its common name (japonica) by looking truly enigmatic and oriental, next to the black timber of my Zephirine Drouhin arbour. My first foray into ferns has been most thrilling - not that I have anything of any rarity, but the asplenium, dryopteris wallichianum and holly leaf (cyrtomium fortunei) all look splendid with milium effusum and a variety of anemones. One of the nicest was bought simply because the name was such a mouthful - polystichum setiferum plumosomultilobum! The hakenochloa has a battle to survive as both dogs and cat make a beeline for its succulent (to them) leaves - I actually had to spray it with summat I got from the vet to stop my collie from chewing her foot where she had a tumour removed (bitter spray). Sadistically, I rather enjoyed watching the dismayed scowling of the beasties after tucking in to large bites of alum flavoured grass. Planted my first lettuces, just before rain fell on the parched soil of East Anglia. Magic! Peppers have germinated and are ready for potting on and I have been sorting and swapping veg seeds. There is a new variety of squash, especially for the UK climate which I am looking forward to - Autumn Crown, a hybrid between Crown Prince and butternut. CP is tasty but enormous while butternut never ripens here unless it has been an extraordinary summer so I have high hopes. As usual, I always have too many squashed because they are just so beautiful - there is nothing to match going to the plot on a foggy autumn morning to find numerous golden, orange, pale blue, deep green, dappled, speckled and luminous squashes, resting on the dark fen soil. So voluptuous. After the tomato years (up to 20 varieties and far too many plants) I limit myself to a mere handful of varieties and only 50 plants. A couple are reliable faves (Sungold, Alicante, Matina) I grow every year and try 1 new one as well. Same with the potatoes (Kestrel, a fantastic potato in every way). The only thing I spray against is horrid peach leaf curl - the trick is the timing and I hope I managed it OK this year - a blast of copper just before bud break. The little nectarines are tiny and deep crimson with white flesh and utterly luscious. This year, I am hoping for filberts, plums and maybe even almonds, along with Meyer lemons, from young trees planted over the last 4/5 years although there will be another year to wait for the new raspberries (the old ones were badly virused and had to go, along with many blackcurrants with Big bud mite - gah. As always, March is a taunting month - we may like to think it is spring but we cannot escape the freezing winds, sleet and misery of late winter. Still, there are primroses and early tulips. A long slow burn until April comes flying in.

Wetting the soil took some experimentation for me to figure out. First I put it in the containers dry, then tried to wet it from the top. No go, water just sat on top due to surface tension. Fail. Then I tried bottom soaking. No go, similar issue. The water just wouldn't soak into the soil. Fail 2. THEN I put the soil in a 5 gal bucket filled about half-way and blasted the garden hose into it (did this outside). Used a small shovel and mixed it together. Ah, MUCH better. With soil thoroughly wet I put it in the containers and let it drain. But still too slow. Not so bad. NOW the soil is put in the 5 gal bucket about half to 2/3 full. Water is blasted into it with a garden hose. Then I mount up a motar / paint mixing paddle into my 1/2" plug-in DeWalt power drill and attach a foregrip for getter control. Power on, pull the trigger and go to town. 850 rpm of mixing power. Takes about 15 seconds to mix up 2.5 - 3 gal of soil. Awesomeness. Once the drill/mixer paddle is set up it takes a VERY short time to dump in more soil, add water, and then 15 seconds or so of mixing. These aren't my photos but they give you a good idea:

carolb, I don't think it would work in a cookie press at all. I just finished making Pepperjack Crackers using my cookie press, so their consistency is fresh in my mind. I looked at the Taste of Home recipe yesterday. It has more booze, but it also has fewer eggs, no sour cream, and confectioner's sugar instead of granulated which means a modicum of cornstarch, too. This carp is going in the trash. It was a poorly constructed recipe. It is not something I ever would have chosen to bake. I only attempted it because in a moment of idiocy, I signed up for a Cookie Challenge. The people who did make the recipe, say the cookies are tasteless and the texture is not pleasing. LindaC, I think this is exactly one of those cases you propose - someone came up with a recipe and either didn't test it or if they did, there are steps and ingredients that didn't make it into print.