1. Mix them with sweet apples for pie (what my neighbor does) 2. Make "membrillo" 3. Paradise jelly (I've made almost 20 jars this year). 4. Preserves Linda Zeidrich's Joy of Jams has a few quince recipes, try doing a search on Harvest forum too. Here's my recipe (small batch, the original was a huge batch) for Paradise Jelly (apple-quince-cranberry): Paradise Jelly (makes 3 halfpints) I steamed the quinces a couple of days ahead and put the juice in the fridge. Didn't weigh them, but probably 5 lbs of quinces yielded about 7.5 cups of juice - or at least brown water (I'm not sure how much pectin was in the juice - I kept adding water to the pot while steaming.). I think the juice would have been lighter if I had simmered the quinces, or if I had a steam juicer, instead of trying to steam them in the oven - they oxidized. Then I did the apples and cranberries another day (just 5lbs of mixed apples, not all tart, most Golden and Red (?) Delicious since that's what I had. Got about 6 cups of juice from those.) Used a 12-oz bag of cranberries cooked until just popped in the hot strained apple juice, let drain in linen jelly bag for 5 hours, refrigerated juice and put the fruit pulp into a Ziploc bag with the apple pulp. I milled the fruit the next day, cooked with 1/2C of sugar, and made about 36 oz (pint, 12-oz jar processed 20 min and 8-oz jar in fridge) of cran-applesauce. I strained the apple-cranberry juice through coffee filters the next day. Now, for the jelly: Mix the quince juice and the cran-apple juice half and half (or whatever you have). Use no more than 4C of juice total, or this will set before you get it in the jars. Use at least a 6-quart (deep) preserving pan b/c it will foam up like crazy. Add 3C of sugar to the 4C of juice, I also added 1 tsp of bottled (strained) lemon juice. Simmer, stirring constantly, until the sugar is dissolved, then raise heat to a boil (make sure your canner is preheated with the jars sterilized if processing only 5 minutes). Boil until gel point (220 at sea level) or until jelly sheets from a metal spoon (remove from heat while testing). Quickly skim if necessary. Jar immediately, keeping ladle close to funnel. Do all 3 jars at once, then go back and spoon off any foam from the top of the jars, adjust the headspace to 1/4", wipe rims and put lids and rings on. DON'T use a bubble freer even if you see tiny bubbles in the jars - just wait til they rise to the surface and spoon the foam off. Process 5 minutes (for sterilized jars) or 10 min (for unsterilized) in BWB. The last jar you fill may have some small bubbles, and you might have an ounce or 2 left in the pan to put in the fridge. Rinse out the pan with very hot water and dry before starting the next batch - you don't want "threads" of old jelly in the new batch. This may set up very quickly (while you're ladling it into the jars) or it may take a couple of weeks depending on the pectin level of the juice. Set the cooled jars away on a level surface and leave them alone for 2-3 weeks before you decide you've made syrup instead of jelly. I tried reprocessing some and found that the top of the jar was liquid after a week, but the bottom was starting to set so I should have left it alone. The apple-quince jelly I made is taking longer to set than the stuff with cranberry in it.

Hmm, I can't think of much except for dense chocolate. I am not a great lover of chocolate, so a little bit is enough. I adore any kind of baked goods and simply cannot stop with one or two bites. If there is a cookie in the house, and there always is, I just keep going back for more. Right now there is an unopened box of Girl Scout Thin Mints that are calling to me. Now, there's one kind of chocolate that I like a lot. I can live without most ice cream and don't crave chips. Of course, if the chips are there I'll eat them but I won't go looking for them as I do for cookies. I am just your basic sweet junk food junkie.

This is my bid for a 3 feet by 6 feet walnut edge grain butcher block: $595.35 The edges will be simple eased edges. I believe this quote is for 1 3/4 inch thick. 2" thick is proportionally more. Truck shipping to from Ohio to NJ will cost $159.00 for a total $754.35. The wood top will arrive unfinished. I will have to do a light finish sanding with a 220 or 320 grit sandpaper and then oil or polyurethane all surfaces. That works out to about 33 dollars a square foot. I haven't asked for a price quote from Grothouse yet. But I plan to. I suspect that the price goes up significantly if there is a detailed ogee edge treatment and if it comes prefinished. The Grothous finish is supposed to be excellent. But now that I've seen the informative youtube video posted on GW I don't think I mind finishing the wood myself.

Thanks guys for the responses! I pulled up some of them and the roots have a bit of a yellow tone to them but more white. I just googled cottonwood tree and haven’t seen any in the area including the white cotton parts but I will keep a watchful eye going forward! So all of those seeds are going to develop into elderberry trees? Last year at this time there were 8-10 feet high forsythia all over there but in April we took most of them out and created a bed with all of those flowers, so I definitely don’t want more trees there. I guess the forsythia brought too much shade under them, and the soil was clay (as toxcrusadr mentioned) at the time before we added amendments and mulch for the beds, thus why this is the first time I’m noticing them In the garden. If they can turn into a bush I’d have the perfect place to move some of them as I know that they make the birds happy.