Ruthanna hit the nail on the head. Heat-and-eat and ready-to-eat foods work best. I teach cooking/nutrition classes at our local Food Bank, and more often than not, it's the children in the family who do the "cooking". Depending on the economy, it's mainly substance abusers and the learning disabled folks who frequent the food bank, not necessarily people who are down on their luck. Food preparation is not a priority for most of the folks. Having something to eat, is. Many have only a few pans or a skillet, and most depend on a hot plate or a small microwave for food preparation. Many live in a cheap hotel room, not a house, and don't always have a refrigerator. Beans of all varieties are plentiful at the food bank, but many people don't like them, have no knowledge of how to prepare them, or an inclination to cook something that takes so long, and will give them back to the food bank if they find them in their bags. I've had some luck teaching a class on how to "cook" beans and rice in a Thermos bottle using boiling water, but had to provide the Thermos bottles. Tortillas and cans of refried beans seem to work better than beans they need to cook, plus it's a complete protein (grain/legume). We mill beans into bean flour so they can make "instant" refried beans (cooking bean flour and water for a few minutes), and this has worked well for many of the folks. I base many recipes on USDA commodity foods. Those are foods people may commonly get free and need recipes and help using. -Grainlady

I've never seen a surge strip without a ground. If you could find an old 2-pin plug strip, you could make one with an MOV, but why bother? That's effectively what you have anyway when you plug a 3-pin one into your current receptacle. An ungrounded surge strip provides some measure of protection from surges and lightning, but not nearly as much as a properly grounded one. As for your DSL friend working on your wiring - I recommend saying "no thanks." In most cities, it is not legal for an unlicensed person to work on your wiring, with one exception - YOU are permitted to do so, *if* you own the home, and *if* you obtain a permit from the city's building department. I was going to recommend that you install a GFI yourself - the only installation differences between "with a ground" and "without a ground" is that without a ground you simply don't connect anything to the ground terminal, and on the GFI face you stick a label that says "no equipment ground." But then I looked again at the photo you posted. It's tough to be sure, but the junction box your recept is in doesn't look very generous in size. It might be OK, but I'm a bit concerned that you might have a tough time fitting a GFI in there. I'd hate to have you start the job and not be able to finish it. So, if you really want a GFI, you can do two things: 1) Hire an electrician to install a GFI. 2) Buy a plug-in GFI adapter from the hardware store. But I'm not so sure a GFI is what you really want. I'm getting a sense that you think having a ground is helpful for reducing radiation exposure. I don't know if that's so; it's not my area of expertise. However, note that while a GFI will provide protection from electrical shock, and that's a very good thing, it won't provide a ground. In order to get a proper and safe ground, you'll have to have a new receptacle installed, with a homerun directly back to the house's main panel (breaker or fuse box). My guess is that your friend who can "ground your outlet" is talking about either "bootlegging" a ground, or running a separate ground wire back to the main panel. The first is dangerous. The second is so much work that you might as well go ahead and do it right, installing a new cable run and a new receptacle. Unless you have the time, skills, and inclination to study up on the techniques of home wiring, that's most likely a job for a pro. FWIW, I bought my first home computer in 1984. I was living in a late-1950s home where the only grounded receptacles were in the kitchen and garage. I didn't want my $2000 system destroyed by lightning or power surges, so I did as I described above - installed a new, properly grounded receptacle for the computer with a home run back to the main panel. That's what I recommend for you.

I know this isn't my convo, but oh well;). Aloebot, I just wanted to say it's funny you said leave the nice looking common ones and go for the rare that you only come across every 5 years. When standing in line waiting to pay I always make new friends and check out what people are buying. I do see lots of people buy common plants, and I always want to say something like "Are you sure you want to buy that;)?Have you seen the other plants." I'm not knocking common plants because some of my fav plants are very common, but a show is where a person can go to find some really cool stuff. But I guess I should be happy people buy the more common because that leaves the less common for me to buy;). Also there's always a vendor or two that I swear go to Home Depot and Lowes a couple weeks prior so they can buy gallon pots for $6 and then split those gallon pots up into thirds and sell those bits for $6;). I wish I lived down there so I could meet up with some very cool people;).

If you'd be willing to send $5 to my paypal I could ship everything to you and it would allow me to print a shipping label online. I think that route would be easier so you dont have to buy an item off a website and have it shipped to me along with shipping charges. I also plan on sending way more than half a dozen each. I grow things once and call it good so I dont have use for these seeds anymore haha.