A few years ago I remember watching a TV show called "French Food At Home" on The Cooking Channel. The host, Laura Caulder, canned whole tomatoes and made it look so easy (which is why it's stuck with me all this time) but it's a very, very wrong method. I just looked up the recipe to be sure I was remembering correctly and it calls for taking whole tomatoes and packing them raw into quart jars with some spices and a slice or two of raw onion. Put on the lids and put the jars into a BWB, cover with water, and weight the jars down so they don't float. Simmer for 1.5 hours until the tomatoes collapse and let the jars cool in the water before removing. The final step says the jars will only look half full when done. There are so many things that are wrong with this recipe. It's just ridiculous. Rodney

The most recently posted Long Island street view is from 2012! No proof they are still there after the 2 polar vortex winters. And the other recent winter that was very cold in New England but not as much down here. (2016 IIRC: well below 0F on Martha's Vineyard. Have no idea how LI fared) They often look out of place in typical residential settings but I think those twin Seattle trees suit the house and are well taken care of so I give them a pass! Good catch GG. I am actually wondering if the NW DC, Bethesda, and Baltimore trees survived this horrid summer...by far the most humid I can remember. We barely had any comfortable dewpoints throughout September, not until the last few days. USUALLY cold fronts start pushing in some crisp weather by the 2nd week of Sept. It was a constant steambath since May. And yes it is humid compared to the PNW, but constant dewpoints 70F or above are not normal at least up here. There's a reason you see at least a few old ironclad rhodies in the DC/Baltimore area, but none in the deep south. And other than the late June/early July drought/heatwave - just long enough to be a nuisance - incredible rainy spells, one after another. I'm lucky to have only lost a couple important rhodies to root rot. OTOH it was nice to not worry about watering the 6 or so new planted camellias in my garden. They are so thirsty in the first year!

Ok, I'm back. I'm one that won't let anything upset me more than 2 minutes. Once it went up to almost 2 hours, this incident made my boss laughed. He never thought I'd be mad at anyone or anything for 'that' long, LOL. It took me longer because I had a crave for some juice. It took sometime to squeeze orange juice & grapefruit. I'm refreshed inside and out now :) Thanks everyone for your comforting words. I truly appreciate it. I don't disagree with GW policies for they are the same of mine too. Even with my best of friends and family, I don't talk much with them about money, politic & religion. These are my NO, NO and NO. Most people don't understand or except that you have your choice and I have mine and just leave it as that. However, at times I notice that people put a thin line between what's political and what's not. Hence, the term "politically correct & incorrect" is all about. I mean I can begin a subject about "dolls" and someone will jump in and turn it into a political subject. It can happen to any subjects. So, would that be my fault? And get penalized for it? Certainly that's what it seemed by the action that GW staff did on my thread. What they should have done was removing those couple of posts that they thought was political only from the thread instead of the whole thread. Well, enough said on my part. These were my last posts from that thread that I could remembered and of course, non-political. To Toni*, I agree with your comment about "disagree does not mean hatred" (did I get it right?). It's hard to reply something that you can't see nor remember clearly. Anyway, I too often have to emphasize that just because I don't like someone or something, it doesn't mean I hate the person/it. Disliking someone to me is to stay away from that person in order to avoid troubles. It had nothing to do with hate. Hate is such a strong word and I have no reason to hate anyone. Sue_va, thanks for reading my posts. I didn't know I have a fan :). I've been with GW actually much longer that the post about opening jars. I have too many hobbies and often involved in sharing & learning from these forums. Thus, I do pop in and out from different forums. Not enough time in a day to get involved in all. However, I do come back to KT now and then. If not, I'd missing all the laughters and informative threads/posts such as the one that Alisande recently was enthuse about her new stick vacuum. LOL, I went ahead and purchased one too! Alisande should get a commission for all the sales that came from that thread. So, my current hobby is machine knitting. A hobby that was quite popular and expensive prior to the mid-80's. When our US economy went down in the 80's, the market for knitting machine plumped as well. Many companies stopped producing knitting machines. This is one hobby that takes time to learn. The machine knitters in those days were mostly in their senior years; an age that one was no longer working and had time to learn the hobby. These seniors now are passing away and left all these knitting machines to their loved one. Since the hobby became unpopular, the heirs didn't know what to do or operate these machines; thus, they've been sold on eBay and abroad inexpensively. Now the low to mid-income hobbyists can afford these knitting machines, such as I. It's slowing coming back. Most knowledge and teachings are relied on the experienced machine knitters and the internet, a place where we can use it to teach/share & learn globally. In which this means that my time on those forums have been mostly there. I will try to visit here more often. Sorry folks for such a long post. Hope I didn't bored you. Ciao for now. (I do have a little Italian mixed up with Asian in me since I spent 5 of my childhood years in Milano).

Kassala, Yes, Springbok does guarantee it's puzzle, with a receipt. This was a gift from 3 months ago, and the buyer does not have one anymore. The box had not been opened till I opened it 5 days ago. ole joyful, yes, I sent an email to Springbok. Springbok has always meant fine puzzles, so what has changed. And there are many puzzle lovers that post here. I wanted to give them a 'heads up' on something to watch for. As I said above I have another Springbok puzzle that I just opened this morning. It is a new puzzle, was sealed in the box, given to me about a year ago. It is an old Springbok production as I had done that same one in 2008. When I get into it tomorrow, I will come back here and give you all a report.