Maggie, I think you are on to something..and as FG states, the rate of those diagnosed with Celiac is climbing..Funny that she put the numbers in..very close to the rate of Autism too (and there are some studies on going about the correlation of food related allergies and different degrees and oddities of Autism in children)..I have known for a long time that foods can cause amazing "problems" in an allergic body. Many kids that sport ADD, ADHD symptoms/problems have food allergies and the culprits in many ways are wheat, corn and dairy. The problem I see is, that this wonderful country we live in likes to play with our food supply. Things are tainted that shouldn't be tainted...And next year I will enjoy things that I can't eat right now..because I can grow heirloom varieties organically! and Maggie, I do eat pasta..and serve it to my family. I use brown rice and spelt(spelt is the "ancient" wheat grain) I'm not going gluten free, so I can eat Spelt, because it's a "whole" uncompromised grain.I also eat Oats. I just had a piece of Spelt Toast from TJ's with my homemade Tayberry jam for breakfast. Lastnight I was up alone, hubby was out with the "fellas" and the boys were asleep..I spent hours reading all the Gluten Free Blogs, looking at Gluten Free recipes and sites..There is sooooooo much information! Again, I don't want anyone confused on this subject and as it pertains to me, I'm just learning too...But I can see that in one months time, it's made a considerable difference removing wheat, corn, soy and red meat from my diet (as hard as it is to leave some of those things behind! BEEF!) The pay off is way worth it. I've never felt so commited in my life about something. I've always had the desire to feed my family better, to use as much whole foods as possible, to prepare good foods and treats using the best I could afford. I just never really implemented it as far as I knew I should..Until now..I've made a drastic change, and intend to slowly slip the changes into my families diet as well..They are already sharing in some things with no loss!

Shortly after we moved into our old house 24 years ago I bought a set of Corelle. My sister and MIL had it and raved about how it never breaks. My kids were little, almost two and four years old, so I bought two sets of eight. Very pretty fluted pattern with flowers. I was unloading the dishwater one day with my DD, not quite two, in her high chair in the kitchen. I had the entire stack of 16 plated in both hands but just bumped the frame of the cabinet and I swear those dishes leaped out of my hands onto the vinyl floor and EXPLODED!!! All 16 -- unrecognizable as anything but shards of glass on the floor. All over the kitchen. I was barefoot and my DD started screaming, crying, and trying to get out of her high chair. I couldn't get to her because of the glass. She was scared to death. She is 26 and still remembers that day "mommy boke the dises" I had to climb on the counters to get to the dining room doorway and run get shoes to get her out of the highchair. So I called Corelle. They replaced all of the plates and I packed them up in a box and never used again. I replaced with cheap white fruit embossed stoneware - some from the dollar store and still have that set. I do have and use Corelle soup bowls and berry bowls. Plain white rimmed in black. But one of my weaknesses is dishes, maybe 12 sets.... But I'm saving that Corelle set for my daughter when she gets married.

Interesting post as I was almost going to post something similar. I need something different for my bed. It's a queen and most of my comforters are "double/queen" whatever that means. I have quite the set of duvets, but I'm not a huge fan of most of them anymore. SO and I are using mostly blankets made for a double. Right now we have an actual queen-sized synthetic comforter with an ugly fabric cover, inside a maroon flannel duvet cover that we both love the color of. But it is like sleeping under lead! And SO is such a human furnace that even with the heat turned down as low as possible, he heats up the room all on his own if I leave the door closed. I wake up at night and can feel the heat pouring off of him. If he puts his hand on me, it is like lava flowing over me. My nickname for him is "Lava Man." I toss and turn a lot, and the comforter is constricting me. My two basic temperatures in bed are cold and hot. And the general feeling is "oppressed" in one way or the other.

The worm bin questions on water and make up/foods have been answered very well by annpat and armoured. Including where to get your starter worms, and how it can end up being an outdoor thing as time goes on with gardening. In case you can't find any locally, this is what I'd suggest for ordering commercially. Being in the Midwest, if you are certain you only want red wigglers, then you don't want to order from anywhere that sources or raises the smaller composting worms in the South. Most have either 100% blue worms, Perionyx excavatus, or a good portion of those. Past handful of years blues have found the warmer parts of this country to be a great home. They out compete red wigglers in the same small space because they are just plain faster. Breed faster, eat faster, move faster. Little race cars. Blues are good if it never freezes for any lengthy time frame where you'd keep worms, and you don't need worms for fishing purposes. Blue worms are the supermodels of worms, really thin. Blues do make vermicompost very fast, arguably faster than red wigglers. Cold weather exposed small composting worms for more than 16 hours will kill off most anything that isn't a 'red wiggler'. Some sites mention 45f degrees, but death after being kept in 34f for 16 hrs has been documented. Can't remember if this was a large bin or something else. I keep my blues indoors so no trouble. Blues would not in theory work outdoors further north in compost piles, rarely tumbled tumblers, or composty garden beds. They might drop cocoons before dying, or find some other way of adapting, so who knows. Probably best to keep blues away from the outdoors either way, because of how fast they process materials. My outdoor worms are mostly Alabama Jumpers and African Nightcrawlers. They co-exist seemingly fine, and occupy different layers. Alabama Jumpers are I believe one of the highly controversial outdoor worms, for similar reasons that Blue Worms could be bad news to unprepared forests. Have also used the indoor variety of 'continuous flow through' bins. Worm Inn, both sizes, The Urban Worm Bag version 2, etc. Have one of the small breeder Vermibags, but not one of the big versions yet. I get freshly interested about vermicomposting each winter mostly. When the garden beds are slam full of greens, carrots and such, so I have little room outside for tucking in all the scraps and small animal bedding. Suddenly I'm eyeing my indoor worms and saying... get ready little guys! Time to step it up! A bin that has been functioning with live worms and no problems for about 6 months would count as 'established' to my understanding. If you split off worms from an established bin to a new bin, those old worms don't automatically make the new bin an established one. Also used many many Rubbermaid type bins and Can O Worms previous to those. They all work, but if you like blending and have lots of wet scraps, breathable bags might be easier to manage. Bag type bins are great for getting a lot of materials processed faster than usually occurs in a solid Rubbermaid type bin. Where to keep a worm bin in the house really depends on the tolerance of others living in the home. Over my life in many houses, they have been in every room of the house, and sometimes as a variety of disguised furniture. Except in a basement. Only because I've never lived where a basement is a practical thing, and not an under the house inadvertent pool. Green with envy about basements. ;) Only thing is you can not run a extra damp or overfeed bin out in a public living space. The chance of some sort of smell or flying pest is just too high. I run all my bins on the dry side, but the ones I disliked the most were the Can O Worms (stacking towers) because the finished trays, even with running them somewhat dry, were so very heavy and all end up with the red wiggler worms dangling from the bottom holes. Guess worms didn't read the manual for how they were all supposed to move upwards. Imagine holding one of those trays. Where do you set that down? I was quite unhappy every time I needed to harvest that thing. *Shudder*