Wow this is an old thread! Well, I do believe it was a fisher cat. We have them here now and several of them too! I had seen one squashed in the road a few weeks back. They are quite mean critters. Since I started this thread years ago there was a woman who was running/ walking her dog in Ct. At black pond. Which is maybe 10 to 15 minutes from my house, anyway she and her dog were attacked my a juvenile mountain lion. I hear she and her dog survived but I do not know the full story. Also since then I had been doing some reading up on mountain lions. And also since then I have had two rescued wimpy but wonderful greyhounds. One night while I was taking them out for their final nightly "run" up in the woods to do their business, they both stopped dead in their tracks. I had an enclosure put together up in the woods with several metal fence in a roll type deal and a gate with latest h that we installed. The dogs stopped dead and was staring up towards the back of the enclosure. I tool my spotlight and started looking around. About 50 feet on the other side of the fence in the back were red and green shining eyes. A tan head and chest. It moved sideways , turning it's body and it was without a doubt a mountain lion! Needless to say I yelled for the dogs to go to the house and we ran and went inside. It didn't seem to follow us. Thankfully. But my town is filled with wildlife , I've seen everything but moose in town. We all have to learn to coexhist. Ciao all! Is there a way to delete this thread?

It wasn't clear to me at first what you were seeking in this thread, legsbig. But it's becoming clearer now. From some of the things you said I thought you were talking about canning or preserving chiles in this thread and talking about fermentation of a mash in the other thread. Now it seems that what you really wanted to know about is the same in both threads and that is fermentation. The difference between the two is that in canning, you aim to prevent growth of any microbes while in fermentation, you deliberately cultivate certain ones. There are several types of fermentation. Some are desireable such as yeast fermentation of grape juice to make wine, bacterial fermentation of wine to make vinegar, bacterial fermentation of milk to make yogurt and bacterial fermentation of cabbage to make sauerkraut. Undesirable types of fermentation are ones which cause decay and spoilage. To make a chile pepper mash, I believe you specifically want a lactic acid fermentation, since that is the type used in all vegetable fermentation that I know of. To achieve that, you need to establish conditions favorable to the growth of that bacteria and conditions which will discourage growth of yeast and unwanted types of bacteria. This is done by adding the correct amount of salt to the mash and adjusting pH to a suitable level if necessary. The article linked below is rigorous and will explain all of this better than I can. Just remember that you are trying to nurture the lactic acid bacteria and discourage all other microbes. I hope you find this useful and are successful in making what you want. Jim Here is a link that might be useful: Bacterial Fermentations

I saw that article posted on Yahoo, and it was the first I had heard of this, so of course I've been frantically reading whatever I've found on the internet this afternoon. Of course my husband thinks I'm crazy, but geez, seems like every where I look lately is some new research saying xyz is hazardous to our health. I feel like moving to a cave, but then again, there probably is radon in the cave!! I've read/see some of the other post regarding this very heated issue. Obviously there are radon test, but is there a simple test for the radiation? I'm in lower AL, so odds are there isn't anyone around here to test for that sort of thing. Could one assume if you test for radon, and it's a low, or acceptable reading, then the radiation should be low as well? Or could the radon be low and radiation levels high? Sorry, by no means am I a scientist, but am a very alarmed homeowner and mother to a preschooler. We just moved into this house 6 months ago (had Corian previously) and from what I can tell by looking at photos online, looks like we have Amarillo Extremadura from Spain. The builder of our home put it in (spec house), and I've seen plenty of it around, so it must be fairly popular. Anyone know anything about it, should I be terribly concerned? Signed, Scared out of my wits in AL...

I think slate would be pretty dark but might have to check out a sample. Thank you so much for the suggestion, it's a direction I hadn't considered. I really need to try coming up with a solution that will allow me to keep my existing floor... at least for now. My kitchen floor extends into a foyer, laundry room and powder room. Anything I do will be a big expense and I need to do the cabinet/counter part of the project first.