Thanks for the great recipes! We planted heirloom zucchini seeds this year and they are coming in strong. We will have tons in no time. I so glad to be able to add some recipes to bag of tricks. I have a great recipe for zucchini bread. I have tried many zucchini bread recipes in the past and this is the very best bread! It is very moist. I'm sure you will love it! Zucchini Bread 1 c zucchini 3/4 c nuts (optional) 1 c any dried fruit (optional) 1 1/4 c flour 3/4 c sugar 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp salt 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp nutmeg 2 eggs 1/2 c melted butter 1/2 c vanilla yogurt 1 tsp vanilla 1 tsp citrus zest Pre heat oven to 350â¢. Grate zucchini, dry and set aside in small bowl. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg in large bowl and set aside. In medium bowl whisk eggs, melted butter, yogurt, vanilla and zest. Fold into bowl of dry ingredients. Mix well. Add zucchini, nuts and dried fruit. Place in prepared 9X5 pan. This recipe can be easily double. Enjoy! ~Tina~

Well, we had a good week. Let's see, what about the eating part . . . we had ginger-garlic stirfry chicken w/ candied walnuts, classic hot and sour soup, abondigas (Mexican meatball) soup, pesto both normal/basil and tomato/trapanese, seared salmon with sweet sauce that I'd call ''semi-sashimi'', broiled beef short ribs w/ hoisin/BBQ sauce, miso soup, slow-cooked beef brisket, tomatoes baked and broiled w/ cheese and mayo, some excellent couscous in a great chicken broth, lots of tangy salads, orange cake, peach cobbler, spicy marinated and grilled steaks which put me in a food coma, two chicken and chorizo paellas which worked out even though we used long-grain rice, and some other stuff that I forget. Poor dishwasher worked overtime. Even though we dined like, well, oinkers, the total food and wine bill for the whole week was probably the equivalent of a couple of group dinners out. Doing your own cooking just beats restaurants all day long. Took a five hour kayak trip, mis-timed the wind (lake wind advisories the last couple of days) and paddled our arms off to get home before the whitecaps and waves got too bad. Some mild sunburns. A cigar and scotch night, which basically means me and W_____ being banished to chairs way far downwind, out where the coyotes prowl. Lots of ''stitch and b*tch'' circles, there was quite an obsessive knitting group - which is why we resorted to the cigars in the first place. Fixed some plumbing leaks - it is a very old cabin, and something always has to be mended. Some serious napping. Got caught up on our friend's lives, mid-life menopauses, growing kids, and how everyone is coping w/ the current economy - lots of ''re-inventing oneself'', ''consulting'' and ''living more simply'' going on, but things are okay. The BP oil spill cleanup looks to be a surprise positive for one guy's research funding, glad someone I know is benefiting from that. 13 y/o R_____ has become quite the jazz pianist. 11 y/o C____ does a mean Michael Jackson dance routine. Found a quirkly old-time gun and blade store that had a particular discontinued Forschner Chinese vegetable cleaver that I've been looking for. Then a 12 hour drive back to Portland, kayaks on the roof killing the fuel economy, and back to work today. The best thing is that we are all getting together in a month to rebuild a rotten deck at another cabin. And there's an excellent little oyster farm just five miles down the road . . .

That would certainly explain the difference between your experience carding cotton and plllog's. Seeding cotton has to be one of the worst jobs there is. Also, I was a small child. I was at my great-great-great aunt's house ... and she moved in with us when I was in 1st grade (no kindergarten, so I assume I was 6-7 years old). I have this image of them stuck in the house and taking the seed corn out of the walls where it was stored (if that part is even right). What I remember about the books was that, how excited the little girls were to get one tin cup to share between the two of them, Yes, I remember that too -- but I'm not clear on whether I remember it from the books or the TV series. I remember that they had a narrow "compartment" in the back wall of their house -- a false wall -- and the corn was stored in that. Thinking about it now, I don't know why anyone would have gone to so much trouble for seed corn. I mean, farmers didn't have the technology to build anything except small houses, so why would you use any of your precious living space for seed corn? My family has been on the same property since the 1700s, and we have more sheds "than you can shake a stick at" ... some of them open, some of them quite secure. Seems to me that seed corn would've been kept in one of the secure sheds. that she rode around with her fiance for years Now that part I remember clearly: Laura had been hired to teach school in a neighboring town, and she "boarded" with a family who didn't like her much /she didn't like them much. The mother of the family didn't like living in the West and threatened suicide, saying she'd go home one way or another. I remember being genuinely afraid for Laura staying in that house. At the end of her first week with them, Laura was dreading the weekend /no escape to school ... and suddenly Almonzo appeared (unannounced) at the door with his light sleigh, saying he'd arranged with her father that he'd provide her with transportation home for the weekends. She literally ran to get her things. It was clear from the first ride that Almonzo was interested in Laura, but she didn't catch on for a while. Re scullery maids, that's why I said at the same economic level. Most of us here at middle class. Granted there was hardly any middle class in the 18th Yeah, the hardly-any-middle-class-existed and few people were rich ... that is why I said most of us would've been the scullery girls. Has anyone here watched those videos that were popular a decade or so ago in which a modern family posed as an 1800 (?) family ... and another in which a small group of people posed as American pioneers and lived for a time using those skills? I just read on Wikipedia that Eli Whitney was commissioned to make the gin, and was inspired to the method by watching a cat trying to pull a chicken through a fence. I've no idea if it's true, but it's a great story. Some people say he didn't invent it at all; rather, it was a slave on the plantation who invented it, and since neither the slave nor his female owner (was the husband dead?) had any way to market the creation, they claimed that Whitney -- the children's live-in tutor -- had invented it. I'm not purporting this as truth. Obviously, I have no personal knowledge, though it does seem that a slave would've been closer to the cotton-work and would've had time /motivation to think on how to do it better. It's just something I read or heard somewhere. Well, it was the boy--he didn't want people eating up his seed wheat so he made a hidden bin in a wall. In the book Pa Ingalls notices the inside of the room is too small for the outside and finds the wheat that way. Yes, that's what I remember too ... but he not a boy; Almonzo and his adult brother were sharing a cabin and were essentially "hoarding" the seed corn, and when Pa Ingalls confronted them, they said, "We didn't realize people were starving," and they gladly shared it. I'm thinking I remember this from the TV movie. They really did "play up" Pa as hero-of-all-things, and he did solve all sorts of problems about town. In real life, Pa didn't make such good choices for his family; I remember studying these books as a part of a Children's Literature class in college, and I really "saw" Pa for the first time through adult eyes -- he was a bit of a disappointment. I think Almonzo was a better husband; he and Laura floundered a bit /were beset by serious troubles in their younger years, but then they found "their place" and stuck to it through thick and thin. Pa Ingalls always had his eyes set somewhere else. It's not that I'm obsessed with these books I was obsessed with them as a child. Now I'm a literature teacher, and I have a very good memory for books -- even things I haven't read in years.

Not all sandwiches need air, and quesadillas especially do not have air in them, and I eat those more often than sandwiches. I prefer dense sandwiches to ones that are air filled, and I do vacuum seal certain sandwiches to get rid of air. I also often heat sandwiches and also often press them when heating them, and thus remove air from them. I do this when I make Reuben sandwiches, and I make my own sauerkraut for these. I also make my own mustard, for that matter. Deviled ham, egg salad, and tuna salad sandwiches also have very little air in them, especially if you do not add lettuce. I generally make quesadillas with these fillings instead of sandwiches, and of course I heat the tortillas on a comal to make them. One trick I learned from Ina Garten was to add hummus to the torilla when making tuna salad quesadillas (or wraps). You can also use pita bread. I have to travel a bit further in Coachella Valley to find lavash than I did in L.A., but Gelson's in Rancho Mirage generally has it, but I can find freshly made house tortillas at Cárdenas in three or four sizes and often substitute those for lavash. I've made lavash myself, but I've also made tortillas, although it is cheaper and easier to buy them here. Another sort of sandwich that I like to make is Calzone, and it is great for picnics, especially if there are a lot of people: I often fill this with mostly cold cuts - Mortadella, ham, salami, Provolone, etc and maybe just a small amount of pasta sauce.