If you do have it, the cooking is easy. One or two days before 1. Set the table the day before. Get all serving pieces and utensils ready, for each dish. Put them out. Napkins, glasses, stemware and decor if applicable, daughter's stuff. salt/pepper/condiments. Guests won't feel deprived if they dont have pickles(unless it's that strange person....) 2. Clear an area to serve dessert, even if plating in the kitchen. Keep dessert area near the coffee/tea area. Serving pieces and plates ready. Have coffee/tea making stuff ready, near the dessert area. Have sugar and creamer bowls ready for service. Use lemons? have a plate/knife, have it out. Dessert teaspoons/forks? put them out here. 3. Disposables are fine in my book. Fifty years ago I used sterling, china and crystal. Then silverplate. Then various potteries and stoneware with stainless utensils. Wood, chrome, stainless, etc serving pieces. Now I use disposables for appet and desserts, and I don't give a hoot. (70 yrs old now) And I love tablescaping. I have a ton of stuff. Very personal here. If you only have energy or desire for disposables, don't be affected by critical snobs. I love good stuff, but I love good people more-and I surely care more about the people. 4. I roast a turkey breast and dark meat pieces. Everyone's favorites. Use the time guides on the packaged turkey and/or in reliable books or reliable on line sources. 5. I don't stuff the turkey anymore but do stuffing in a casserole/or baking pan. No toxins from turkey juices-which can be simulated, taste-wise, by butter, stock, water and spices. Not the toxins! Packaged stuffing stuff is great. If you add celery/onions/nuts/family faves/ cut the celery/onions, etc the day before-which is two days before tg? Wrap in cheap fold over sandwich bags, double wrapped to contain smells. The single most important roadblock to a successful tg day, is an inadequately defrosted turkey. This has been mentioned often before. Depending on size, at least, three,four or five days of defrosting. You can't do anything with a partially frozen turkey. Keep it simple, less sides. Not 4 cranberry recipes to keep everyone happy. Guests will love 7 starches, but will respect 3 plant dishes. What do you want, love or respect. Well, that's pretty drastic, No, hunnybun, no need to choose between love and respect. I am getting crazed. To be continued.

I've been learning a lot about beans recently, but more like pintos, black beans, navy beans. I always think of limas as more like a vegetable. What I've learned is that soaking doesn't actually do anything particularly good for beans. People say it reduces the flatulence, but that seems to be an old wives tale. It does make them cook quicker, but not quicker enough to make it worth the loss of quality. What it does do is make them mushy. Also, there are wives tales about what makes beans tough. The only one I've heard/done proven is acid. Acids should go in after the beans are cooked. The real trick to making good beans is to put them in the oven. If they're good and fresh (haven't been in the cupboard for five years), a whole big pot of beans takes less than an hour to cook through. Cover well with water, an inch or so above bean level, and bring to a boil. Cover and put them in the oven at 300-350ð depending on your oven. Mine is very up to temperature and 300ð is good. Most people might want 325ð or a little more, though low and slow is a good motto. My last pot of pintos took about 50 minutes. There is some guesswork, but they're beans. Just check. Then there's the flavor without salt. If you're used to a lot of salt, you may have an adjustment period. Do you have to watch sodium in vegetables, too? If not, adding plenty of garlic (no sodium) and onions, and some celery (has the most sodium), should give you some saltiness without spoons of salt. Can you have hot peppers? They're low sodium and can help amuse your tongue. Also, try adding in some acid at the end. Some vinegar or wine. Lemon has only a little sodium. Acid can increase a sensation of saltiness without adding salt. And there are all kinds of spices and herbs you can add to any kind of cooking that will just amp up flavor in general. Mostly, if you find your beans are bland even after you've added vegetables and spices, you may need to reset your receptors. Try to eat them as is, maybe with something tasty on the side, and get used to how they taste. After awhile of cooking and eating low sodium, foods that used to be "tasty" will taste salty to you, and your well flavored beans will taste normal. There's way too much salt in most American food. Oh, yeah. The kind of beans I'm talking about freeze pretty well after cooking, but like all things can lose some texture in the freezer. As to the "consequences" of eating beans, that usually comes from not being used to the quantity of fiber. Eat them when you won't be embarrassed, and keep them as part of your diet, and eat them regularly, and the effect should wear off. As an alternative, you can sprout them. That is supposed to de-gas-ify them, and also make them easier to digest in general. This post was edited by plllog on Sun, Jan 18, 15 at 0:18

I'm so bummed! And the closer I looked at it, I could see the webs and sap beads they leave behind. Grrr! It is on the main trunk and 2 of the 4 branches. I wonder if I can use our shower head to hose it off?? We have well water... It's 35 degrees out so it's not really ideal to hose it off outside... Thoughts? I have it in our living room where there are other plants, but the closest is 4 feet away (Poinsettia), the rest are about 12ft, and then on the other side of the room. I could always move it to the dining room where there are no plants, and it would get the same amount of light. I'll be cleaning it up in just a moment. Hopefully all ends well!

I am sorry you used the advice of the Home Depot "experts". Here is a quote from Al Tapla who developed the 5-1-1 mix: I can say that I haven't actually used cedar bark/mulch to grow in, so I can't comment on the practice directly or from actual experience, but I can say that because the tannins, as well as terpenoid and phenolic compounds cedar is rich in are known to be allelopathic (inhibit growth) to many other plants, I have discounted the likelihood that it would be a suitable choice for me. :-(