I've been making Rumaki in my 1949 stove for a few years now and it's always a huge hit -- especially when pulled piping hot out of the Grillevator. I grew up with my mom making them in the 60's on -- wait for it! -- her hibachi grill, but there are a whole heap of younger folks to whom retro is brand new. Went to a formal dinner a few months ago and they pulled out Marbella, which caused an audible stir. We've also been using our electric Raclette grill for dinners lately, especially when kids are involved; more sanitary than fondue but still has that '70s eat-in/love-in vibe. Paraphrasing Bertolt Brecht: there is nothing new under the broiler.

I know people (some are members of this forum) who routinely drive around the neighborhood and pick up bags of leaves set out on the curb for trash collection. I don't think there's any danger in doing that, in terms of the leaves being contaminated with anything worrisome. Some members of this forum just have agreements in place where the neighbors give them all their autumn leaves for the compost pile or for mulch and the gardener gives them produce in return in the summer months. There's more than one way to skin a cat. (Don't tell my cats I said that.) Even though we have 10+ acres of woodland, the only leaves we routinely collect are the ones that fall on the lawn. We just run over them with the mower and chop them up, catching them in the grass catcher and dumping them right from the grass catcher to the garden pathways. I could go into the woodland and rake up and collect a lot more, but I remain mindful of the fact that the leaves in the woodland will decompose and feed the woodland soil and then the woodland soil will feed the plants. For a few years, I did collect leaf mold and autumn leaves from the woodland, but always feel guilty when I take stuff out of the woods, so I try to only collect from the yard. Luckily we have planted tons of trees in the yard since moving here and they are big enough now that they drop lots and lots of leaves. Nancy, Once you get yourself in the mindset that it is better to be safe than sorry, then letting municipal compost age before you use it becomes second nature as does testing stuff before you add it to the garden. The price of being complacent and not testing is that you risk losing at least a year's worth of garden. Even if you find that compost or hay fails the bioassay test done with peas or beans, that doesn't necessarily mean you cannot use the compost or hay right away. You just have to use it with a crop that is not bothered by the herbicide residue---and that would be corn---any corn---sweet corn, field corn, flour corn, popcorn, etc. or sorghum or something similar. The persistent herbicides that are causing us so much trouble are the ones that are sprayed on hayfields/grassy type crops to kill broadleaved weeds. Those persistent herbicides won't kill your grassy type crops. Just something to keep in mind. Oh, and that's the exact reason that alfalfa hay remains safe to use---alfalfa is a legume, so the problem (problem from a gardener's point of view) herbicides cannot be sprayed on it or it would kill the alfalfa plants and there would be no alfalfa hay. I'd use alfalfa hay a lot except it is very expensive to buy. No one is responsible for the health and safety of our own gardens except for us. Just us. To steal from the title of my favorite TV show, this is us. No one cares about our gardens like we do. So, we have to shoulder that responsibility ourselves, because the rest of the chemical-using world is going to keep spraying their herbicides and they really don't care if it affects us. At least nowadays the persistent herbicides are labeled as persistent and the users are warned that plants sprayed with them can contaminate manure and compost. In the early days of the persistent herbicide crisis, the farmers using the herbicides was as shocked by their persistence in composted manure, compost, hay and even cattle feed as the gardeners were. Nowadays there is no excuse for a farmer or rancher passing on contaminated manure or hay and claiming they didn't know about the persistence of the herbicide. There's no way they don't know, unless they aren't reading the labels of products applied to their own property. I am grateful we live surrounded by ranches and not by farms. Anyone who lives close enough to a farm to have herbicide drift from that farm is going to have problems from time to time with herbicide drift a lot more often than those of us who generally only get hit in spring when everyone is either spraying their pastures with those persistent herbicides or spraying their fencelines with either glypohosate, 2-4-D or a combination product containing both. Well, unless someone lucks out and lives by an organic farm, but that would be an incredible stroke of luck. As hard as it can be to grow organically and in the safest and most sustainable way possible, it really is easier now that it ever has been before. There's a much wider range of organic products available, especially organic fertilizers, than what we had 20 or 30 or more years ago. There's more organic pesticides, though I still use them only minimally. There's barrier methods like micromesh or Biothrips proteknet, and summerweight floating row covers. We just have to stay on top of all the latest developments and perhaps work a bit harder to keep our gardens as happy and as healthy as possible. There were organic remedies I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot-pole decades ago (like rotenone and sabadilla) and there's still current organic remedies I prefer not to use, though they aren't as dangerous as the ones I mentioned. Remember that just because a product label says it is organic, that doesn't mean it is safe. It only means it is derived from a natural, not synthetic, active ingredient. Even more frustratingly, sometimes manufacturers add a non-safe extra ingredient to an organic product, and I won't use that product because of the added ingredient. Coming from a natural versus synthetic origin does not automatically make a product safe, and that is probably the single most misunderstood thing about organic gardening. For example, take diatomaceous earth--a longtime natural remedy. At one point, a specific manufacturer began adding a chemical pesticide to the bags of DE it produced. So, an unsuspecting person might think they were buying food-grade DE but they were buying a chemical pesticide "enhanced" DE. You always have to read the labels and know what you're getting! Organics are safer in general, but not all meet my own safety standards and not many of them end up in my garden. Remember that this is YOUR garden. You practically live in it in the summer, and (depending on your circumstances) so do your pets, your native garden helper wildlife like bees and toads, your children, grandchildren, spouses and some pets. It is your environment. Keep it safe. With my garden, except for obvious outside issues like herbicide drift that I cannot control, the buck stops with me. Nothing unsafe is going to make it into my garden unless I allow it to so do, and I don't. Because we all like to strive to grow in the healthiest way possible, we have to be the person who says no sometimes to products that can harm as much as they can help. I know plenty of people who use all sorts of synthetic chemicals in their gardens on a regular basis and that's their choice. My choice generally is not to use those in mine. You have to decide what matters to you. Some people use synthetic fertilizers and fungicides and are okay with that, but never would use a synthetic herbicide or pesticide. Some use nothing but organics. Some use nothing but synthetics. Some people who never, ever, ever would use a synthetic product of any sort in their garden still refuse to acknowledge the risk involved in bringing in outside manure, compost or hay and that's a sort of Russian roulette they're playing with their otherwise organic garden. They're playing the odds. Sometimes it is an accident---like a rancher who also is a gardener forgets they bought a lot of hay one summer in drought and they forget that the manure in the cattle barn might have herbicide residue in it from that purchased hay and they use that manure in their garden, thereby poisoning their own soil with a product that they don't even use on their own property. It happens. People are human and make mistakes. Some of us strive to be as organic as possible, but will use a synthetic pesticide, for example, in a worse-case-scenario where organic pesticides repeatedly have failed to halt the pest damage and we are stepping up to the next strongest pesticide, which happens to be synthetic. Never say never but instead focus on using integrated pest management wisely and in a way that fits with your own standards. You never know what a huge invasion by something like blister beetles or grasshoppers might push you into doing. Some day you may have to use a product one time that you normally never would use. Allow yourself to do that if it is the only way to save your garden. I think there's worse things in the world than spraying a synthetic pesticide one time, though I'd never routinely spray one. While it always is my choice to be as organic as possible, I did spray a broad-spectrum pesticide one time (yep, as in one time in my entire life) and the world didn't end. I hated doing it, but it saved my garden. I still hope I never have to do it again. In the end, we all do what we have to do to feed our gardening addiction. I just hope we all try to be the kind of gardeners who create a garden that is a beautiful, healthy and productive ecosystem, and never forget how many other little living creatures share the garden ecosystem with us. It's not only about the plants. While I don't want to do things that harm the plants, I also don't want to harm everyone else who lives in or passes through the garden---and that includes the birds, lizards, toads, frogs, turtles, skinks, butterflies, hummingbirds, green lacewings, beneficial wasps, earthworms, ground beetles, assassin bugs, etc. Dawn

Chicken Marbella is a classic chicken recipe from the girls at The Silver Palate. It was my first "gourmet" cookbook and I've made it a lot over the years. The ingredients are very different and would not seem to go together but they do! The other day I found this crockpot recipe for the dish and I made it today because I was very very busy and something simmering in the crockpot while I painted the porch railings, sewed a Halloween costume, and changed out my flowers from summer to fall was perfect. I think it was as good as the original! CROCKPOT CHICKEN MARBELLA 8 pieces of chicken (you can use all breasts, a whole chicken, or all thighs or legs) 4 cloves garlic, chopped 1 T. Italian seasoning (a new staple in my larder) ¼ c. olive oil ¼ c. white balsamic vinegar 1 jar capers, drained ¼ c. maple syrup ⅔ c. jumbo raisins or prunes* 1 jar Spanish olives stuffed with pimento, drained 2 bay leaves Place chicken in slow cooker. Add remaining 8 ingredients with the chicken Cover and cook until the meat is tender and cooked through, 4 - 5 hours on high, or 7 - 8 hours on low. Gently transfer chicken to serving platter. Top with raisin or prune//olive mixture and any remaining juices from the slow cooker. Garnish with parsley. *the original receipt used prunes and I did too. But raisins will work if you don’t like prunes or don’t have any in your larder.

I never liked my crockpot, which was one of the newer too hot ones, but I was given a Breville Fast Slow, which is like an Instant Pot, and the slow cook on that is fabulous, plus, you can adjust everything to suit yourself. I've never had an issue slow cooking in an oven if it went down low enough. It's the nanny state new crockpots that are the problem.