Yes, it's canola oil, but it's not the cooking version -- it's probably the horticultural version of canola oil which is sold under the Lilly Miller Vegol Year Round Pesticidal Oil brand as well as by Bayer as their Natria Multi-Insect Control for between 10 and 15 bucks per bottle. The difference between the cooking product and the horticultural product is the addition of emulsifiers that allow the canola oil to mix well with water. (Note that neither company advertises its product as a fungicide.) If you try to use the cooking oil, it would just float on top of the water, and you couldn't get the 1% solution of the product that they discuss in this research. I have tried both of these products. The Natria one works better. The Lilly Miller formulation burned my foliage. The oil essentially masks the mildew, and new spores can't get through the coating of oil to attack the leaves. So, it does work, if you get good enough coverage with the spray and keep after it all the time, not letting it wash off. That's why these sorts of things usually do better in the lab than in practice. One can control all the negatives, like, for example, no rain and no overhead watering after the material is applied. Kathy

I'll have to come back and look and the Peach and Pear Chili Sauce more carefully later. I'm in the midst of applesauce and apple butter. However, basically that's a tomato-fruit salsa with a good amount of vinegar, so my instinct is it's OK. But as I said, I'll look more closely and find some recipes to compare with in a bit. Or Dave or Linda Lou or someone might feel inclined. The Ball Complete Book is a compilation of all the best from Ball (U.S. Division), Bernardin (Canadian Division) and Kerr (the "other" canning supply company which was subsumed by the bigger corporation). Bernardin Canada follows the same USDA standards as Ball but tends to focus less on the "standards" and offers more ethnic and "gourment" canning formulas. The Ball Complete (Bernardin Complete on the North side of the border) is dual metric and imperial measures. I like metric and find that handy. Keep in mind Ball's main interest is in making money via the jars and other canning supplies they sell. Publishing the Blue Book is a way to promote their product. They aren't trying to cover every possible recipe; it's not in their interest to expend huge sums of money for testing of a lot of esoteric recipes. So each edition gains a few and loses a few. (I don't know who Ball's recipe testers are, but a few of their offerings have been real stinkers taste-wise.) So that fact that a chutney or salsa or pickle or whatever isn't in the BBB doesn't mean there's no safe way to can it. It just means Ball isn't bothering with it. Keep in mind there are also reliable specialists out there. Linda Amendt's preserves are fun, though she's too fond of liquid pectin for my taste. Except for the curds, which I alluded to previously, she offers some great recipes and some very helpful tips and strategies. For sweet preserves there's also Linda Ziedrich (totally reliable) and Madelaine Bullwinkel is A+++ by me. The Jamlady cookbook is also reliable and like a textbook for the art of jams and jellies. Ziedrich's first book was on pickles and provides a wide range of pickling options from traditional fermented to quick pickles, canned, refrigerated and freezer. She has a peach-Pepper Relish to die for. I think it's still posted on some thread or other. Ellie Topp's Small Batch Preserving takes canning in new and interesting directions. Because she is a food scientist, she has the skills to devise recipes just a bit out of the mainstream. So those are some of the options. Gotta go. Carol

As much as we enjoyed the Robert Parker books, I refused to buy them after I realized that we were reading them in about 2 hours. They were great big books printed on the thickest paper with the largest margins and very few words per page. We used to joke about how fast we would read them. "Honey, could you flip the steak now?" "Sure, just let me read this Spenser book first." lol My irreverent husband wondered if his obituary would be written like that, too. All that aside, I'm sorry Robert Parker died, he wasn't very old and I'm sure his family will miss him terribly. We did enjoy his books and the TV show with Robert Urich, he was the perfect Spenser. I recommend reading his books in the order that they were written in, when possible. They do have a progression of characters and story lines that might be helpful. (And I have to agree about the Susan Silverman eating habits and Jesse Stone's tortured love life.... I got kind of tired of both of those.)

Maybe these self-styled authors compose on their phones as I sometimes do. I blame my often tortured syntax and misplaced punctuation on the size of the screen. I need to see the whole piece to ascertain whether I'm making any sense, but if I can see everything I need a magnifying glass to read it. However, if I enlarge it, I can read only about ten words at a time so l lose track of the antecedents, and I wind up writing a mess. If I try to edit, I make a bigger mess. Annpan, I've 'inhaled' some beautiful coastlines. I like that wording. :-) However: ...his broad shoulders that ran like a cylinder down to his hips. This fella had a strange anatomy! I'm entertained by the very thought.