The best thing I've found to cook on is my Coleman single burner camp stove. Tried a variety of other things, portable ranges, a terrible whirlpool stove-top from many years ago, but you just cant beat that camp stove. The thing is basically a single burner that sits atop a green propane cylinder. Its only 10,000 BTU's, so it wont burn your pot up if you use it correctly and it uses about half of that bottle for a really long canning job. Ive done two canning jobs now and the thing runs perfectly for regulating the pressure. You just place your canner on it on a level surface, load it up, open and light it, set it to a decent flame and get your head of steam up. Once you have vented out the air and have the steam coming out for about ten minutes, place on your weights and let it pressurize. Once you reach operating pressure, lower the flame a to a reasonable level keeping the weights rocking and let it go until done. One word of caution though. Make sure you use the little stand that the bottle sits in to give your stove a good wide base, and don't let children bump into this. As long as its centered and you don't kick it or something, it will stay there with no problems. You can get a stove like this at any wally world :) If you don't like the height of the thing, Ozark Trail makes a two burner camp stove with two 6000BTU burners on it that sits flat and low. It's in the ballpark of 28 bucks. It takes longer to heat obviously, but you cant beat a gas flame for heat regulation. That's just my 2 cents. I'm sure everybody has their favorite way of heating PC's, but for me a gas flame does the best. I hope this helped, and don't be afraid of your equipment. There's nothing really fancy about it, Just get to know it and go to town. Just set up your gear and follow the recipe timetables and pressures.

There was a problem processing your search request at this time. Please try your search request again at a later time. I could be wrong, but I think the message above is being given in error of "No matches found"...or something like that. If you do a search on any member name there, the post will come up. Then try doing a search on a newbie name, and you will get the 'top' message posted here. Sounds like a problem with the site...maybe it should be reported. What do you think? Sue

You've put a lot of thought and research into this so I would go for it. You will feel so much better. I know I am guilty of overthinking and hesitating because of a bad review or two. The appliances had the features I wanted so I will just deal (and maybe rant and rave) if there are problems in the future. Or maybe get an extended warranty on the DW if that will make you more comfortable.

Thanks everyone. For some reason, gardenweb didn't forward me these responses until nadiag's today - so I assumed I hadn't gotten any replies. I think nadiag is right about their services - they don't cold call, but optimize searches on google, yahoo and msn searches so that you come up. The zip code exclusivity means that they won't perform this service for other therapists in those zip codes. If I wanted to pay a ton of money, I could get them to only work with me in the entire DC area. That doesn't mean other companies and individuals aren't optimizing their own names to appear on top during web searches. Osbist and rivkadr - I am working on a website. In fact, that cold call from Virtro really catalyzed me. I've contacted 2 web designers and gotten proposals. I've written more than half my content and already know which pages I want. Yes, it is a simple site in terms of not doing e-commerce on the site. Rivkadr - here in DC, most therapists I know don't have websites, but perhaps 5-10% do - and in a city with tons of therapist, that's still a lot on line. But almost all their websites are amateurish and the content is lacking in integrity and honesty toward potential clients. I know these sites work for some of them, but I want one that's more honest and reflective of the therapy process - and less insulting to the viewer's intelligence. I'd also like visual appeal and sophisticated design. My concern with Virtro is that I'm not sure they're offering anything I couldn't do myself with paying for google adwords. I think that's all they're doing - but on 3 search engines instead of one. They claim to be superior about knowing which adwords are most effective. Nadiag- it sounds like they have truly performed that way for you. I'm not sure I could do as well for myself. If I do google adwords myself, in a big city, you pay for the search words and number of clicks to your site - it's much more costly bc. therapists bid against each other to pay the most for those search words. So my monthly costs could well be the same as Virtro's charges - $150-300/month - which isn't very different than the yellow page ad I've had (that used to work to bring a few patients a year, but is no longer effective). Nadiag - when you hire Virtro, does your fee to them cover the cost for all those search words - or do you also have to pay google, yahoo, and msn for each keyword you've selected? I think that Virtro - just like google adwords - is much more expensive in a more concentrated, urban market. I'm so glad you stumbled on this thread and responded. I had thought I"d pass on Virtro - but since you've had success, I may recontact them and see if their cost includes all charges by the search engines to use those keywords. Thanks. Still happy to hear any other opinions. Lynn. PS - I can tell that I've already learned a fair bit since I posted 2 weeks ago.