After a series of senior moments, I successfully completed the mincemeat in 2 canner loads. I ended up with 15 processed pints, one quart in the refrigerator, and a quart of mincemeat syrupy liquid in the refrigerator. My husband has already asked if I could use the mincemeat syrup to make a sauce for bread pudding, which I think will work quite nicely. The reason the recipe made so much was I kept adding fruit, then had to add to the other ingredients proportionally so that the recipe stayed on track. I think it is all going to turn out okay. I did not need to add the cider vinegar for thinning, although I thought I did. Silly me, noticed how thick it was before I started the simmer...totally forgot about the juices cooking out of the fruit. I had already added one cup of cider vinegar by then, and by the time it simmered a while, it was pretty syrupy. I end up adding more sugar. I canned the first batch then had the "duh" moment that it was supposed to be thicker, so had to go look up how thick it was supposed to be. I drained some of the excess syrup off and canned the second batch. My husband has a sweet tooth and he loves this. What I really learned from this is that the regular pear mincemeat recipe in the Ball Blue Book is much simpler, calls for fewer ingredients, is less expensive to make, and I like it just as well. The other thing I noticed...the best flavor was before I added any spices at all, and all of the dried fruits had been macerating in the pear liqueur and sugar. That would have been delicious all by itself! Live and learn...probably don't need to make any mincemeat for a while...lol. Jill

Something i forgot to mention, i have a BB with 3 cotyledons, nothing too amazing, but there's another with two seedlings out of one seed, two leaders, the stems were fused a few millimeters above the soil level. There is a chance that the twins were two thin seeds stuck together, but i always check for that beforehand and do not like leaving them stuck together. I plan on growing them out myself, i wanted to mark them today before they become lost in the mix and unidentifiable. Pruning technique for the twins should be interesting. I took a picture of them a couple of weeks back, sent the pics to my PC, but can't find them for the life of me now... Steve

Well, I don't have a wand, but I will say that I think laminate is great stuff. I've never been sold on granite (ducking projectile tomatoes) and laminate gives you so many choices...so many colors! Here are some questions to think about. 1. Do you want light or dark? A light countertop is easier (on the eye) to work on and will brighten your kitchen more than any other element. More functional light is reflected off horizontal surfaces than vertical surfaces, countertops particularly since they are closer to windows and artificial light sources. Dark counters are very fashionable right now. Dark wood, dark granite, dark soapstone. It's mostly done with white cabs, but you see dark counters almost everywhere at the moment. Very elegant. Would this look suit the style of your kitchen and your home? 2. Do you want something that mimics a natural material (like granite or wood) or something that says "Hey, I'm plastic and that's okay!" Think boomerangs! As for the wood look, that's being shown in a lot of high end kitchens where I suspect nobody cooks! ;-) But a deep dark warm wood-look laminate could be fabulous and very up to the minute (without the upkeep of real walnut!) 3. Do you like to see or not see toast crumbs? IOW, do you want your counters to hide the bits and pieces of everyday life or do you want something very clean looking so not a crumb escapes? 4. To bring out the natural richness of your oak cabs, think about the opposite side of the color wheel...blues because they are directly opposite orange, and greens because they always look good with wood. 5. What is your style? MCM? You need boomerangs! Soft Contemporary? Maybe a finely speckled stone look alike. Country? Traditional? Tuscan? If you have a particular style, look at other kitchens in the same or similar style and try to mimic what they are using. If you haven't been to the Finished Kitchens Blog, you should look there for ideas and inspiration. Don't get freaked out by the big-ticket things you see over there (!) just see what appeals to you and make a note. Remember, you can get a neutral countertop material and do the color thing with paint. It's less risky and better for resale if that looms on your horizon. Or you can do a bit more color on the floor, which will also hide some dirt, and then pull that color into a lighter countertop material with a melange of color, including hints of whatever color you choose for the floor. After you have thought about these questions, you should be able to eliminate a lot of choices and start to zero in on what you want and need. Then, go to a store that has lots of samples. Maybe not a big box store...I don't know if they have a full representation or not. (You can ask.) See what draws you eye and see if it meets the criteria you set by answering the questions above. Order or borrow samples to live with for a while. When you're down to a couple of choices, get a bunch of chips and line them up so you can try to replicate a larger area. Good luck and keep us posted!

I'm a little disappointed in Brandy Boy. It is heavily infected with early blight, and the only tomatoes on the plant are the ones that formed back in late May, when I first put them in the ground. My other tomatoes are resisting EB much better, and they are continually setting new fruit. 'Beefsteak' has already given me ripe tomatoes. 'KBX' should follow suit in a day or two. Brandy Boys look just as green as ever. In Brandy Boy's defense, it has the largest tomatoes out of all my plants, and it also has the most fruit setting on one truss. Hopefully, in a few more days I will have some ripened fruit to show everyone. However, unless the taste is absolutely out-of-this-world, I probably won't grow Brandy Boy again.