The people responsible for approving memberships and adding the ability to join certain forums have very busy lives outside of HT. They get to it as quickly as possible. Members don't have to be logged in to read, only to respond. I don't bother logging in unless I have something to say. There's a big difference between HT and GW. HT is privately owned. Two very busy people do the best they can and don't earn a penny for their efforts. GW is owned by iVillage where people are paid to run this forum. They both provide great services to us for free.

I went looking for some info on Hostas, and now I can say I am a hostaholic. From there I discovered the Winter Sowing forum and also discovered that I have a very addictive personality. Now lets see, I go to the pond forum, annuals, Canadian forum ect. ect. ect. I really need help. lol Hubby doesn't know what to do, know I have bags of potting soil stashed in the basement, containers coming out the wazoo, Hostas that I don't have room to plant, seeds drying all over the house, plans for a pond next year and a new garden bed that I'll be starting any day. He just shakes his head. I really hope I get this second job I applied for. Brenda

Hopefully this will clarify. I have a copy of the latest edition. The majority of recipes in "So Easy to Preserve" are the ones you see on the NCHFP site. I haven't gone through the index to check each-and-every recipe, but my guess is few, if none, are specific to the book. Most of the book is a basic manual covering the same information about canning fruits, vegetables, meats, relishes, pickles, etc. I'd guess their main intent in offering it is to provide a print source for those who don't have computer access (or good access) and those who prefer to have a print source to refer to. So if you click on this link for tomatoes you'll find a whole range of canning information and recipes, the same you'd see in "So Easy to Preserve". NCHFP How to Can Tomatoes. To answer gran2's question, here's a clickable map of all the states. So if you click on Washington, for instance, it will take you directly to Washington State University's Extension site. Clickable Map of State Extension Services. There's a lot of "cross-fertilization" of Extension agencies. So you might find a document on canning seafood from Oregon Extension posted on Virginia's website. Colorado's info on hot peppers is on lots of other state sites and Washington Extension agents developed some salsa recipes posted all over the country. Extension agencies have limited resources, so many of them specialize. Washington, AFAIK, puts most of its energy into horticultural and environmental studies. But individual counties in the Washington system do publish home preserving info. Here's one from Clark County: Clark County Food Safety and Nutrition Page. The most efficient way to find any of the information you want is to do an advanced search on Google or other service. Include "Extension" in the search string and indicate you only want ".edu" pages. That way the results will be limited to Extension agency documents, which are as reliable as it gets in home food preservation. (With rare exceptions where an extension service will still have an out-of-date document posted.) Carol

I use MasterCook and it does the work for me. There are other cooking programs that also can figure the calories (plus amounts of carbs, fiber, fat, cholestrol, protein and more). It isn't a perfect system though- it just adds the nutrition information for each ingredient. So if you fry something in a cup of oil, it will calculate the nutrition information based on a cup of oil, even though you don't actually eat it all. But it does give you a good idea on what you are eating. Best thing about MasterCook is that you can make menues and see your daily totals without a heck of a lot of work. I'm all for the quick and easy way! I don't think MasterCook is still being produced, but you can find other programs like it and they aren't too expensive. Many also come with tons of recipes, plus you can add your own.