We do mail order all the time, with many different companies, and have done so for decades. H&D is one of the best companies to deal with, with high quality fruit and OUTSTANDING customer service. They go the extra mile to satisfy all customers. I just got my DH a Fruit of the Month sub for the full year, and he is in love with the quality/sweetness of their fruit. The Riviera pears were somewhat speckled from sun; but that doesn't affect the flavor. annelamontj, sounds like your pears definitely got frozen. Just contact H&D and let them know what happened. There are plenty of mail order companies that are a pain to deal with if there's a problem - believe me, I could really name names! - but H&D, like Eddie Bauer, Amazon (ONLY Amazon products, not the Marketplace purchases!) have top quality customer service.

I forgot to make latkes! And I have the potatoes, but lately I've been making frittatas with them instead of latkes. The frittata (similar to Spanish omelet) is more work, but it makes better leftovers. Our blu-ray player went on the blink last Friday, and so we had to buy an emergency player on Dec 24, which was not bad because we went to Best Buy early - before it got crowded, which it did by noon. Since we bought an HD player, Kevin decided to buy a 65" 4K TV, and so we spent the week-end trying to get everything working together properly, which included mounting the new TV on the wall. Therefore I did not have as much time to spend cooking. I was going to put this info on your "How did your meals come out" thread, but since I didn't cook much, I thought it fit in better here. I don't even remember what we ate except that one meal was leftover stromboli. By yesterday, we had no more leftovers, and so I took some ground turkey meat from the freezer and made mushroom-turkey meatloaf, and I can use the leftover meatloaf in a pasta sauce. I'm going to start storing ground turkey in the freezer more often because it defrosts very nicely in my MW. BTW, our TV was eight years old and I was ready to replace it. The Blu-ray player was not quite that old, but it simply would not work any more. I do not like the new remote controls we have, and we cannot zoom the picture on the TV when watching cable. At first we hooked up both cable and an antenna, and that got the TV confused, and so we disconnected the antenna. We use it mainly when cable goes out. Our sound system is old also (5.1 surround), and if we try to play discs that have 7.1 sound, it comes out in just stereo. Some discs support both 5.1 plus 7.1, and I told Kevin only to buy those. We do NOT want a new sound system.

Martha Scott, I don't know how old you are, but I'm 62. I still don't think that adding a cup of water to a package of mix for gravy is "cooking", but I do know that a lot of the younger generation(s) just don't cook at all and this would be a stretch for them. There is such a proliferation of convenience foods and fast/casual restaurants and delivery services available that it seems "old fashioned" to some young people to cook. Unfortunately it's that availability and mindset that brought us a generation of children that think chicken only comes in nuggets and causes us to be the most unhealthy we've ever been. (sigh) writersblock, maybe it's my age, but none of my aunts, my Mother or my Grandmother who lived with us ever used a package of frosting mix, I didn't know they existed until I was a young adult. The only convenience food I ever saw was canned soup, an occasional frozen dinner, Appian Way pizza and Jiffy Mix which my Grandmother used occasionally for banana bread because it was made in Michigan. They were all terrible, LOL. Olychick, I have made the Hot Milk Cake into cupcakes, to be used for strawberry shortcake They worked OK, but I was careful not to "handle" the batter too strongly so I didn't reduce the loft I got from beating the eggs. Just remember, this is not a "light and fluffy" cake, so it won't have the cake mix texture that most of today's kids recognize. Plllog, my cream cheese frosting is simple. A stick of butter, a package of cream cheese, beat it together. Add as much powdered sugar as you want, the more you add the sweeter it gets. I usually use a pound. Add a teaspoon or so of good vanilla and a tiny bit of cream if you need to. You're done, it's frosting. 4 ingredients, maybe 5, less than 5 minutes. Plus you have a bowl worth licking. (grin) A caveat? It doesn't crust, it stays soft. Annie

Well, plllog, if I ever got to visit you, I'd even drink the water! Although coffee and tea are kind of like flavorings, aren't they? And our water is actually good, it's the same aquifer that Ice Mountain draws their water from, just a few miles away. I spent my childhood drinking it, usually out of the garden hose because if I went inside for a drink Grandma would put me to work ironing washcloths or something. I lived in White Cloud for 35 years though, and their water was dreadful, it smelled of sulfur and was always slightly brown. Maybe that's when I learned to dislike water. And now, of course, here in Michigan we have the Flint water crisis and all those PFAS pollution problems. All this water around us and we can't keep it fit to drink, sheesh. In spite of the cheese thing, though, I think I'd have to at least try those blue cheese shortbreads. Yes, I know that if a major component is something I don't like, I probably won't like the end product, but you never know. It's that "7 year rule" coming around again.... Annie