Annie, I remember last year you said you could get a bushel of apples for $6. My friends make a giant kettle of apple butter, maybe 55 gallons, and they paid $13/bushel last year even with the large quantity they needed. Problem is, those cheap orchards aren't online. Maybe I'll find out where they got theirs. It's over an hour drive to their house, but there's a peach orchard nearby so if I time it right in the season I can do your "peach jam for a cold morning" the same weekend. Wish I could do peach-raspberry jam, but the berry farm with fall raspberries is over an hour in the opposite direction! That 55 gallons of apple butter is something to see. They grind the apples a few days in advance & let them start to ferment, then add tons of sugar in a huge copper kettle over an outdoor fire. Last year toward the end they decided it wasn't quite sweet enough & added another 50-lb bag of sugar! The thing is, they open-kettle can it, zillions of quarts. One year they stacked the jars back in the boxes while hot, and a bunch hadn't sealed by the second day, so they started moving the boxes to check the ones on the bottom. Lo & behold, once they started cooling, they started pinging like crazy. I know fruit butters are pretty low-risk, but I was a little surprised at how nonchalant they were about it. Maybe I fret too much over my canning, but what about a happy, safe medium? Melissa

My mom's Lab had a mass in her abdomen that was benign. She had it literally for YEARS, like 5 or more. It wasn't until it started to press on her stomach so that Ms. Mike couldn't get a full tummy that she finally had to be put to sleep. As far and the liver enzymes go- WAIT! With her symptoms- panting, urinating a lot, and her breed and that liver enzyme count it sounds like Cushings disease, which is treatable or at least managable. Maybe you wouldn't want to do that- the treatment can be hard on dogs and it can get expensive, but even so there are alternatives. Lysodren/mitotane is the usual treatment, but you can use ketoconazole (an antifungal drug) to help control symptoms and it's not as hard on them, plus cheaper. The testing for Cushings can be expensive too. Obviously it's your choice about Annie, if you feel she is up to more testing and treatments, etc. You know her and how she responds to things, and she is getting up there in age. And expense is a real concern. How much you want to put into her is a very personal and difficult decision, and depends on a lot of things. But I have certainly seen dogs with ALKP over 10,000 that had cushings, got treated, and did wonderfully for years. The mass is of course a complicating factor, but it could be benign.

We had and still have the best family doctor in the world. I had the same problem, no way no how would my DS take medicine. Thank goodness he was seldom sick, one time when he was we go to the doc and I told him I couldn't get DS to take medicine even with force, if we held him down and gave it to him, he would gag until he threw it up. Well the doctor looked at him and said now you know you have to take your medicine to get better and so we are going to put your medicine in syringes and when you are done taking these you should be well. I got the perscription filled, took it back to the docs office and he filled 12 syringes up and put them in a baggie and we took them home and my DS never balked, took every one of them no problem. After that if he just had a fever or whatever, if it was something that didn't require a visit to the Doc, I would just fill up the syringes myself and tell him I had stopped at Dr. Larry's office and he had sent some medicine home for him. Never had another problem.

I may have made the wrong assumption, was it a dry crumbly or moist crumbly? I thought it was crumbly from being too moist, but now I need to make sure after thinking about it again. If it's from being too moist, I wouldn't use larger eggs, or an extra egg. --Are there tunnels channeling through the cake crumb? That means the batter was over-mixed or there was too much egg. --Cracks on top can mean: *It was over-mixed. Don't use an electric mixer - use a Danish Dough Whisk or a wooden spoon to help prevent over-mixing the batter and developing too much gluten. Or if you use an electric mixer, only mix the dry ingredients in until they are incorporated, and no more than that) *The batter was too firm. *Can be due to too all the add-ins. *Too much leavening. *Oven door opened too early. I would cream the fat and sugar, then add the eggs and mix lightly, and finally the applesauce; not all together as the instructions indicate. I bet that one change would improve the cake. Did you need to let the cake "ripen" due to the high concentration of fruit before slicing it? -Grainlady