Thank you all. I have done some occasional stalking over on the Harvest forum, and you bet those folks know their stuff. Maybe I worded my search wrong, but couldn't seem to find the info I was looking for. (maybe because most people have enough sense to figure it out for themselves...) Thank you, Dave, for your words about Victorio. I bought it last year for dealing with blueberries, but it was an incredible help with my tomato harvest this year. It absolutely does leave the pulp. Last year (when I grew sauce tomatoes), I had lots and lots of sauce after I ran it through a wire strainer. I just didn't have enough sense to know what to do with it. This year, I did strain the first couple batches of tomatoes I ran through it, and the small amount of pulp that was in those beefsteaks made lovely sauce. Just not enough of it. What I especially liked was how quickly the pulp cooked down into sauce once it was strained out. After using this amazing gadget this year, I don't think there's much of anything that anyone could say to make me fall out of love with it. It's a huge labor and time saver! As a note, I discovered by accident, that if I filled the hopper with tomato pieces before I cranked them through and then emptied the bowl right into a hot pan, I had minimal separation of pulp and water in the jars. Re: Determinate Sauce tomato. I grow my vegetables organically, and honestly don't even like to spray organic concoctions. Add to that the fact that the entire county here seems to have Early Blight in the soil, plus the fact that our incredibly hot mid summer heat puts a stop to tomato production anyway, and I have decided that it really doesn't matter whether I grow determinates or indeterminates. I am still only going to get the first crop. I will try Opalka as an experiment. Sounds intriguing. But I am very grateful for the extra mention of Italia. All three recs are on my list to try.

Talk about feeling incredibly stupid...I just posted a long response to your story, Kristi, and it has completely disappeared. And I KNOW I hit "Post" at the appropriate time. Grrrrrr...... Suffice it to say that I'm so sorry to hear about your injury. Our eyes are so precious yet so fragile...they should come equipped with some sort of built in steel shutter system that automatically deploys when sharp pointy things (like deadly pineapples) come close to them! That's what we gardeners need!! I know how bad it hurts when I just get dirt in my eyes while gardening, so I can only imagine how painful this must have been for you. I'm so glad no permanent damage was done, and I hope it continues to heal rapidly with no more problems. Take care of yourself! Big Hugs To You! Marcia

hahaha...not from lack of nicotine...most likely it was replacing the cigs with chardonnay that mucked me up.;o) Back OT for a sec: My decision on substrate was made for me after I noticed that the corner of the mirror was broken. I just got back from ordering the new glass. Went with laminated instead of tempered. The glass guy said that if in the future the picture became fractured it wouldn't break into big shards or crash crystals but stay in place. Thought I'd give it a go.

When I was working on the design for my kitchen, I drew it up on good-old-fashioned graph paper and then took a picture of it with my digital camera. We didn't have a scanner at the time so this was the fastest way for me to do it. What I do now when I work on other people's layouts is to work in Microsoft's PowerPoint. I downloaded free graph paper off the web, copied it to a PPT presentation, and then created appliances, cabinets, fixtures, etc. to a scale of one box = 6"x6". Then, when I work on a layout, I make a copy of this "master", work up a layout on a slide, save the slide as a "JPEG" (.jpg) file, upload it to Photobucket, and post it here. So, there are several ways you can do it! Good luck! BTW...think "work zones" instead of "work triangles". Here is a link that might be useful: Thread discussing Work Zones & Triangles