Alfalfa meal or pellets is really great stuff, I use it on my roses, once a year on my clematis and have also fed my brugs with it. The tea stinks to high heaven but its great for those plants. I add some molasses to the tea also, and some epsom salts. Its also great for heating up a slow or cold compost pile. Alberta

As a child we always had chestnuts around the holidays, dad would use the oven as we had no fireplace. After getting married and buying home with fireplace we cut and put them on a heavy metal sheet that has holes and put on top of the grate in fireplace, there is just the hot wood coals on floor of fireplace , it seems to me after eating them this way for 20 years i enjoy them more than putting in oven. Few years back we cooked in oven and they were good but i prefer the fireplace. I dont remember us ever peeling them when completely cooled down , i think thats because we were always anxious to eat them. In the old neighborhood we lived in dad used to get them and very few ever had the mold in them . Seems nowadays in the stores by me now there are a lot more with the mold as there not properly being store they need a cool dry place. Martin

OK Helen... Here's mini jam for Dummies. :-) It's soooooo simple. PECTIN: Get some green apples. That's under ripe, NOT ripe green cooking apples. Wash em (don't peel or core), quarter em, throw em in the kettle. For each pound of apples add about 2 cups of water and 1 TBS lemon juice. Cook the stuff for about one hour. I cooked my first batch until it was like applesauce... several hours. It's not as good as the batch I cooked until just soft enough to mash it all up. Put through a food mill or mash up with your favorite mashing device. Dump it all in a jelly bag or a strainer lined with a couple double layers of cheese cloth. Leave it dripping overnight. THAT'S IT. If you want to preserve it, heat it up and put in appropriate size jars. Process in BWB for 10 minutes. I did most of mine in 1/2 pint jars so I could do 1 cup of jam at a time. For my meager 1/2 cup of berries I used 1/2 jar of my pectin. TO MAKE JAM For acid fruits put this in a pan: 1 cup cut up fruit 1 cup homemade pectin 3/4 cup sugar (For low acid fruit, add 1 tsp lemon juice per cup of fruit. I made peach jam this way.) Bring the mixture to a boil. I punch my timer when it boils. Boil until it's jam, about 8 to 10 minutes. I find keeping a spoon on top of ice cubes, using my stir spoon to drop a teaspoon full onto the cold spoon, waiting a few seconds until the test cools down, and THEN dripping it back into the kettle makes it easier to know when it's ready. When ready it'll sheet from the spoon rather than drip, drip, drip. NOTE: -You don't have to use a jelly bag or cheese cloth. It just makes a clearer pectin. -There is absolutely no 'apple' taste to the jam, which seems odd when half the jam is apple juice. -You'd think you'd end up with a couple of cups of jam but I end up with just a bit more than the amount of fruit I use. -I save my lemon and lime rinds in the fridge. I just quartered what I had and threw them in. Let me know if you try it and how it works for you!

I can't give you a definitive answer, just a couple of points which may be helpful. Like you, I hate to subject good fish to freezing, even though that is one way to conquer the parasite problem. I have seen worms in ocean white fish fillets, cod I think, once or twice. They were easy to find by visual inspection. I don't think parasites are limited to fresh water fish. There is a long standing controversy re wild vs. farmed salmon. Wild salmon are more apt to pick up parasites from feeding off the sea bottom. Farmed salmon are fed processed food pellets and are free of parasites. I frequently make lox from farmed salmon and would not hesitate to use it for sushi. Another point in its favor is freshness, due to the way it is harvested, quickly refrigerated and shipped immediately. I eat raw clams and oysters often. Parasites are not the issue. The issue with shellfish is bacteria, since they are filter feeders and concentrate any bad stuff if the water is polluted. I've never been sick from raw shellfish. I usually know their source, often because I harvested them myself, and know they are from clean waters. Also, health authorities constantly inspect shellfish and close shellfish beds when pathogens such as bacteria or red tide show up. I think raw shellfish are safer to eat than a medium rare burger. Your fish sellers will have info on the source of their fin fish and shellfish. Just ask. Jim