Thanks Linda. There actually was something in the link that said a bushel of apples would make about 3 gallons of cider. 42 pounds to a bushel (another site) = 14 lbs. per gallon. Hmmmm.....definitely wouldn't want to BUY apples for that! But if I could do a little gleaning........ Lynn, It's at the Long Tom Grange. North of Veneta, west of Junction City. Cute little old grange. I think they'll have some craft stuff, bobbing for apples, etc. OT (a little): HereÂs a link about a guy that build cider pressesÂÂ..lives about 3 miles from me. Someday, IÂd love to meet him. Deanna bmoser: looks like you were posting while I was composing... (grin). Here is a link that might be useful: Correll Cider Presses

Linda enjoy your time away from the snow. :) Yesterday we had 7 inches of heavy wet snow. Another storm system is lurking just around the corner....6-12 inches are predicted on Sunday, then blowing winds on Monday.

Lots of ways to up the heat in things. As I noted I'm particular the Red Savina cultivar which is about twice as hot as regular habeneras (world's hottest 94 - 06). The thought of tabasco sauce in my jelly makes me cringe... a flavor I really don't like. If a person really has a death wish there is a new "world's hottest" in the Bhut Joloki or Ghost Pepper. Measured at over a million scoville heat units it should be hot enough. Purified capsicum is available over the Internet if you want to hit 15-16 million scoville units. The "Dave's" brand of hot sauce has a new one hitting 13 million out of the bottle. People have reported hallucinations after eating lesser Dave's products... not impossible. I've eaten the regular Dave's Insanity Sauce more then once... the first drop you eat is never ever fogotten... sort of burnt into your mind. Dave's is dangerous at a party as the first person to try it will not taste any heat for a few seconds... long enough for the second lemming to leap... when the heat kicks in people can't talk. Without the ability to warn other guests pretty soon everyone is standing around looking at each other being speechless. All sort of makes a regular habenera at 100,000 - 350,000 scoville heat units seem like a mild animal. A regular jalpeno is 5,000 - 15,000 SHU for reference. Police pepper spray is about 5,000,000 SHU. Hottest thing I ever ate was a raw cayenne! IMHO scoville heat units don't fully capture what make a pepper hot. One cayenne pepper fresh from the garden made my mouth foam for 10 minutes... it was gross. No harm done... I was half drunk and went on to finish getting intoxicated. Another thing to consider is that pepper heat changes as you cook it. At first it has an instant brilliant zingy bite-you kind of heat which after cooking for some hours (next day) will cook down to an after burn warm heat that comes on a few seconds after it is eaten. Lots for a cook to play with getting the right combination of raw heat and cooked down heat flavors. Years ago when I was learning to cook curry I was introduced to the concept of adding fresh pepper before serving to reignite the raw flavor. I don't consider myself a "chili head" as the hot pepper crazy people refer to themselves. For the most part I just cook with them. My garden keeps producing new varieties... it was an ex-gf that first gave me Red Savinas to grow. Like other vegtables nothing beats fresh! Lots of Dave's products as well as dried Bhut Joloki ($27/lb + shipping) available on Amazon if you want to get crazy. Purified capsicum and Red Savina peppers/powder/sauce/chocolate bars available from redsavina.com. LOL... I just happened to be window shopping hot pepper products last night. Going to spray my sunflowers with pepper spray this year to see if I can keep the deer from eating them. Yeah... I did say they make chocolate bars with hot pepper! I've found a couple types and LOVE them... who would have thought chocolate and hot pepper would be a good combination... addictive. : ) lyra

I've never sprung for a Honey Baked ham, although I'm told they're good. The closest available is 60 miles or so away, but I got on their website and it looks like they are all "bone-in" although you can also buy halves. If they have a bone, you'll definitely need two. Here deli ham is mostly what LindaC described, salty and watery pieces of some kind of smoky flavored stuff. I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that if I went to Grand Rapids or Ann Arbor and to a higher end grocery, I'd probably get much better stuff. Grandma used to bake a ham with root beer. We thought it was a great treat, although truthfully, it didn't taste like root beer at all, it still just tasted like ham. I'm guessing that the soft drinks mostly add the sweet note to the salty ham, and not the flavor of the soft drink itself. Annie