Yes, your attitude can effect your outcome too! Great comments and info here... Slugs are on my list of things I fight with a passion, like dandalions, horsetail, and morning glories. I have this awful feeling, that when I get to heaven, God is going to say, "But I gave you everything you ever needed and you killed it, pulled it out and burned it. What can I say?" I'm afraid all of mans ills will be cured with all of our cast offs!! lol Having pet food outside is not the bestidea, as already mentioned. We keep ours in the house, in the laundry area. The moister and heat doesn't seem to bother it. We actually feed her inside as well, and keep the area clean. It keeps down on mice and other critters that would love to clean up her dribbles. We winter in AZ and if we feed her outside, skunks come and clean up her mess, not a great idea, considering... Good luck, Smiles, D..

I make sweet potato powder and bet you could make potato flour using the same method. It may not be as fine as commercial potato flour. I just happen to have a box of Ener G Pure Potato Flour on hand and the ingredients...POTATO FLOUR ;-). How to: -Peel, cook, drain and mash 2-pounds potatoes. -Spread on lined trays or fruit roll-up sheets of a dehydrator in 1/2-cup amounts - spread VERY thin. (I can get 1 cup per fruit roll-up sheet in my NESCO American Harvest dehydrator). -Dehydrate at 120°F until CRISPY dry. Turn once to make sure both sides are completely dry. -Pulse the crispy dry dehydrated potatoes in a blender or food processor. To rehydrate this mixture for mashed potatoes, add hot water and add any seasonings you'd like. -Grainlady

Could be - I don't make pie so I wouldn't know. It's from a Biltmore Estate Chef's Selection Cookbook I bought when I was there and the photo looks absolutely delicious so I thought I'd give it a try. I have a few days off from work over the Labor Day holiday and the weather's yucky so thought I'd make some things I've never tried before. For some reason I'm interested in pie - a healthy Key Lime pie recipe from Cooking LIght and this one which is not healthy. Not sure what I'm going to do with all this stuff - not having enough guests for two piesÂ..and I don't want to eat it all.

--Whole wheat pastry flour is milled from low-gluten, low-protein, soft wheat varieties. I use soft white wheat for pastry flour, or anywhere I don't need a lot of gluten development. Spelt is another good wholegrain choice when you don't need a lot of gluten development. Spelt has a gluten level that is 5,000 parts per million; compared to wheat which begins at 50,000 parts per million and go up from there. --Technically, "all-purpose" flour was developed commercially for bleached/unbleached flour from a mixture of hard wheat and soft wheat. There's enough hard wheat so it has enough gluten to make yeast breads, and enough soft wheat flour so it makes decent quick breads, pastry or cakes - so it covers "all purposes", but it's NOT the optimum choice of flour for most things, other than soft dinner rolls. We've just developed our flour use from the most common commercial flour available - all-purpose - with occasional moves to Southern all-purpose for biscuits and quick breads, and the even more elusive cake flour for beautiful tender cakes. Even in the world of commercial bleached/unbleached all-purpose flour there are great differences... Northern all-purpose flour (King Arthur and Robin Hood - 11-12) have a higher protein level than National Brands (Gold Medal and Pillsbury 10-12). Southern all-purpose flour (7.5-9.5) is milled from soft wheat, so it's best used for quick breads, biscuits, muffins, pastry, cookies, cakes - foods where you don't want a lot of gluten development. A mix of 3:2 hard wheat to soft white wheat is a great "all-purpose" mixture when you want soft yeast rolls. Otherwise, choosing a mix of hard wheat and soft wheat is less than optimum for other baked goods. --Whole wheat "bread" flour would mean a high protein level milled from hard wheat. Bleached/Unbleached bread flour has a protein level of 13-14. I've milled wheat that was 16% protein and made yeast bread with it, but it takes a lot more kneading to develop the gluten and you find you have tough bread as a result of the high protein level. This also happens when you add too much vital wheat gluten to a recipe, so more (protein/gluten) is not necessarily better. The protein levels of wheat I purchase is generally between 13% and 14% protein, which is more than enough to raise a lofty loaf of bread. If you tend to get short squatty loaves of 100% whole wheat bread, there are other factors you need to address besides protein/gluten levels - such as stop using a (quick mix) direct dough method and switch to a sponge method. A sponge will help soften the bran - the sharp edges of bran can cut the gluten strands. A sponge method also helps develop the gluten without kneading. Adding an acid ingredient (vinegar, lemon juice, ascorbic acid, etc) to the recipe has a positive effect. There is a substance in wheat germ called Gluthione which breaks down the gluten strands. Adding an acid, such as ascorbic acid, counteracts the negative effects of Glutathione. Ascorbic acid helps to prevent the gluten bonds from breaking down and will repair the gluten bonds, so you'll get a high-rising loaf of 100% whole wheat bread. I generally add 1/8 t. ascorbic acid per loaf of bread when making bread that includes wheatgerm (as a single ingredient or from whole wheat flour). -Something we tend to forget, or possibly didn't even know, hard wheat wasn't even available for milling until the late 1870's when the German Mennonites arrived here in Kansas and brought the granddad of all hard winter wheat varieties, Turkey Red, with them from Europe. Prior to the developing of the hard winter varieties of wheat, all flour was milled from soft wheat. The mills liked soft wheat for milling into flour because it was easy to grind in one pass through the mill, and had a much larger extraction of flour. Soft wheat tends to be a plumper seed with more endosperm, while hard winter wheat is small and rather wrinkled with more bran and less endosperm. You can tell the difference between hard and soft wheat when you mill it at home - the hard wheat flour is more coarse and gritty from the bran, while soft wheat renders a very soft, talcum powder feeling flour. --"Bread flour" or high protein flour milled from hard wheat, was available to commercial bakers and they referenced it by calling it "strong" wheat flour. Strong and weak wheats indicate a wheat or flour's baking strength. It wasn't until the advent of the bread machine in the 1980's that high-gluten bread flour became available for home use. Up until that time all-purpose flour, which is a medium-protein level flour, was about the only kind of flour available for home use. If "whole wheat bread flour" is called for, it means use a "regular" whole wheat flour which is milled from hard wheat, instead of "pastry" whole wheat flour, which is milled from soft wheat. -Grainlady