My husband judges all Caesar by this one. I've been making it for him for almost 35 years. The dressing is made by hand in a wooden bowl. Must haves - A coddled egg, anchovies, homemade croutons and Roquefort Cheese. Caesar Salad adapted from Pat Davis Cooking School 1 large head of Romaine Lettuce, washed, dried and torn into pieces 1 large clove of garlic 1/2 cup olive oil 1 tsp. or more to taste Dijon Mustard salt pepper Splash of Worcestershire sauce anchovy fillets 1/4 cup Roquefort cheese (substitute Maytag or another high quality blue cheese) Fresh grated Parmesan cheese 1 coddled egg red wine vinegar fresh squeezed lemon juice Homemade Croutons Add garlic to salad bowl (wooden works best), sprinkle with salt and use a fork to crush garlic. Turn into a paste. Add coddled egg and mix. Add dijon mustard and mix well. Add anchovy fillets and crush with fork. Drizzle in oil a bit at a time, until the oil is absorbed by the egg mixture. Add red wine vinegar and Worcestershire sauce. Season with pepper. Add salt to taste. Add some lemon juice and mix. Toss Romaine lettuce with dressing and add crumbled Roquefort Cheese. Sprinkle with Parmesan and add croutons. Croutons 2 or 3 slices of French or Italian bread 3/4 inch thick, crusts removed 1 garlic clove olive oil Rub each slice of bread with crushed garlic clove. Cut into cubes. Heat oil and toss the cubes. Make sure they are well coated. Turn often until nicely toasted. Place in a low oven to finish toasting and crisping.

Interesting...how will this book translate? I liked the book but I'm not sure it was good enough or interesting enough to warrant a movie. Several different story lines they could focus on...what will be the dominate thread...marriage?... infidelity?...photography?...secrets?...the nurse?...Downs Syndrome?...the girl living in his childhood home?...or that beautiful green coat that 'she' was wearing the first time he saw her in the Department Store? We will all find out on Saturday night. Thanks for the heads up. sooey

Ogrose, lucky, indeed! My old house is in a neighborhood that had a few original owners left. I met a few when I moved in. They were so amazed at the prices people were getting for the houses in the 1990s, then in the first half of the 2000s. It was so nice to have these original residents as our "history keepers." Mrs. R. could tell me all about the couple who built our house. Pay-it-Forward, our house is not even for sale. We are too young to take out the $45K that we would need in order to sell it, without having to pay a 10% penalty for cashing out an IRA. We have some savings, but not that much! We bought our new house a couple of months after DH's 89 year-old father moved in with us. We found very quickly that having a second bathroom was a real necessity. Plus, Dad was getting too old for stairs, and the laundry was in the basement in the old house. Maintaining his independence was an important factor in the move. He did his own shopping, driving,and laundry, so moving seemed the thing to do. I had been working a new job for a year, and our increased income supported the move, too. Our problem was that we did not know that the housing market would crash. We followed the prices down, and never got ahead of the curve. The house was for sale for a year and a half before we got an offer, and it was for a rent-to-own. We went for it, but the buyer bailed out and bought a nearby house for about a third of what she was contracted for with us. We kept her down payment. We have let one of Dad's former caregivers stay at this house. After Dad's death, she was unemployed for a long time. She is now working and they are trying to get back on their feet. For them, it is uninsured medical expenses that have ruined their credit ratings. He has a seizure disorder and kidney stones, she has an anxiety disorder. Until his son is past the child-support age, most of his check goes to support his son. I really don't know if they will ever get ahead. We would like to hold the house for them until they can qualify to buy it, but I may be losing my job soon. Despite our trying to always live below our means, we are at the edge right now. It is a good thing that we did not buy the first house we fell in love with, it was about 20% more expensive than the one we bought!

Barb -- Even as an instructor, I've always found home canning to be an expensive method for food preservation if you have to purchase the food, and especially if you have to purchase canning equipment. In the home canning class I teach, we do cost analysis charts so people get a better idea of the true cost. Not to mention the hours of food preparation it takes from garden to the table. I used to break down the cost of utilities, but it changes periodically, and now there isn't just one cost, it varies throughout the day, so I don't bother with that anymore. It's not worth my time and trouble to plant, care for, harvest, and process 8-10 pints of pickled beets (about the average we would use in a year) when I can purchase them for 67-cents per can. That's one of the few commercially canned foods I buy. It's expensive for the cost of the utilities to process home canning, and for the extra energy to cool your home with an air conditioner while you process it. Do you have the kind of stove you can do home canning ON? Are your burners large enough (size and B.T.U. out-put) for the size of canner you are using? For a LOT of reasons, freezing or dehydration is a less-expensive choice for home food preservation. I also believe unless you have access to fresh-picked produce in the amounts it takes to fill a canner, you are probably wasting your time AND money because it means your home canned food won't have much in the way of nutrients after the delay from picking until it's canned if you have to wait several days to get the large amounts you need. It definitely doesn't pay to only fill a canner with a few pints/quarts when it takes nearly the same amount of energy to process a canner that is full. I also think most home canned foods are inferior when it comes to nutrition due to the lag time from harvest to processing, as well as from the heat processing, and how long and under what conditions they are stored in. And not everyone likes to eat home canned food.... Most of my friends and most of my students now can a favorite family recipe or two and jam/jelly/apple butter for gift-giving. Dehydrating takes very little energy, other than what it takes for blanching (but not everything requires blanching). I place my dehydrator in the basement where the heat it produces dissipates quickly. The exception is onions, which I do in the garage because of the smell. Kale can get a bit smelly, too. Dehydrated foods takes up less space than canning. It's amazing how many dried apple slices or dried tomato slices you can stuff into a canning jar!!! The FoodSaver product you are considering is fine for what it's designed for, but I think you would be happier with one of the full-size units which are more expensive. I have one of those small units and rarely use it (purchased it at Tuesday Morning for $19 several years ago), while I use the regular one many times each day (and have been using them since 1986). I'm into home food storage and have a whole room in the basement filled with vacuum-sealed dry goods. The FoodSaver is the center of my long-term storage, so it's a must-have for me. I have a new one, still in the box, I purchased on sale, ready to go if the current one quits. My entire freezer is organized with vacuum-sealed items, because they last longer in the freezer. No more freezer-burned food! I can pull out a plastic storage basket and flip through it for vacuum-sealed fruits or vegetables, all in a single layer in the bags. Cut the bag open, remove the amount needed, and reseal the bag and put it back in the basket in the freezer. I freeze soup/stew/chili in serving sizes. Pop it out of the freezer container, stack the "cubes" and vacuum-seal them a FoodSaver bag. Take out what I need and reseal the bag. I have all our breakfast meat in serving amounts and vacuum-sealed. I divide bulk amounts of chicken, and other meat products, into several bags and vacuum-seal it - both raw and pre-cooked. My pantry shelf is lined with foods in canning jars of various sizes. Instead of standing them up-right on the shelves two and three deep, and having to move them to see what's in the back, I lay the jars down on their side with the lid to the front. I have my shelves adjusted so they are the distance apart of one 1/2-gallon jar space (which is the largest jar I use). I spray painted the lids with chalk board paint, and I use a chalk board pencil or liquid chalk board markers (in fun electric colors) to mark the chalkboard lids. Some jars are covered with plastic Ball jar lids and you can write on them with liquid chalk markers. Not all of these are vacuum-sealed, but many are (especially those that contain freeze-dried foods). So my pantry is lined with canning jars filled with dry gluten-free pasta, dried and freeze-dried fruits and vegetables, baking aids like cacao nibs, chocolate chips (several kinds and sizes), chia seeds, palm sugar, arrowroot, whole grains and homemade cereal products, crispy nuts (soaked and dehydrated), pinto bean flakes, dried parsley..... And even more in the food storage room. You will have to determine whether a FoodSaver will meet your food storage needs and goals. -Grainlady