You know that cooking forum looks pretty active, but I don't think I want to get involved. I bet there are at least a few forum masters over there. Did you see the post about ginger? I guess if we eat the stuff from China we all croak. Not good. Very nice lemons Judy. Hope no innocent reader takes that the wrong way. My fridge is kind of a mess right now and I really hate that. All the food for T day plus all those hibernating orchids and carnivorous plants I vowed never to store there. Some of them are actually growing new roots inside their little baggies. I wonder if that's normal? Not many posts now before we reach the magic number. Only profound and heartfelt comments accepted from now on.

I like seafood and that shepherd's pie sounds delish! I have already admitted that the Tuna Pumpkin Soup was so surprisingly tasty! It had a couple dashes of my "shakeable" Super Chili & Garlic Salt. I'm not sure how it would have "gone over" at Thanksgiving. The pumpkin pie was super! Well, maybe just 1 degree short of super. This time, I used a combination of the RMG advice for the pumpkin! David said low oven temperature for a good long while - roasted it at 250o for nearly 2 hours. Beeone said roast in chunks skin side up & remove from pan promptly - I did that. Marj, said drain on coffee filters in colander overnight - I didn't use coffee filters but the roasted pulp went thru the food processor, then sat in a colander for about 3 hours. I decided to give it a good long time to drip. And, that's what it did -- drip, drip, drip. Made a world of difference! The pie was nice and high inside the crust and DW was especially complimentary. This, after disparaging of everything I'd done with pumpkin up until that moment (excepting that soup ;o). . . . still don't know what she found wrong with my pumpkin bread . . . maybe just expected it be be more like either pumpkin muffins or bananaanannana bread, or sumthin . . . Steve

Thanks for all the tips. I just finished decorating the cheesecake with strawberries -- they are overlapping circles of strawberry halves. I loved the idea of the cut-outs for the pies, but since I don't have any letters (except my kids refrigerator magnets ;-) -- ), I just a heart in the top of a couple of the pies. (The cook-off is at a church with the name "heart" in it ) - a little corny to make the hearts so I only did a few. The pies are in the oven. I also grabbed a couple of bandanas we had in the dress-up box to see what I can do with those. Now, I only have to worry transport ... thanks for all the ideas! I'll let you know how it goes.

A restaurant here in California, Marie Calendars has a delicious fresh peach pie. They have killer pie crust, of course, bake it, and pile it high with fresh cut peaches tossed in some kind of peachy clear glaze. Then comes the whipped cream. It's delish!! We have a peach tree, but ours got brown rot this year. It's a cling peach, so not fun to slice, but what we tasted was good. I had the pie crusts all made, but we didn't get around to the spray program. We summer pruned, so hopefully, next year. I make my crusts with sourdough starter, and they are so tender and flaky, they melt in your mouth. Our apple tree produces so many apples, I have enough frozen pie filling to last till next harvest. Anna Apple ripens in June. Suzi