I asked at Wegmans and the Giant. The Giant gave me a quick no. Wegmans appeared amenable at first when they mentioned that they used to save the spoiling produce for local pig farmers. But after I showed up several times to fill out a form that noone could seem to find they lost interest in helping me. The last time I asked they gave me the story that in order to give me the spoiling produce they would need my tax id number, presumably causing me to be liable for taxes on their waste. That turned me off to Wegmans for collecting compost materials. I did place a bin outside of my local Starbucks that the manager agreed to allow to be filled with excess bags of used coffee grounds. She was very reasonable and only asked that I provide the container (a 32 gallon trash can). Unfortunately for me she also told everyone else who showed up for coffee grounds to take them from my bucket, but I still do have a chance of getting up to 6 bags of grounds at a time. That is, if others don't beat me to it. I figure, at the very least, I am stopping more coffee grounds from heading to the landfill with my bucket (since they used to only keep a max of two bags until they went straight into the dumpster), even if its not me who gets them. Cheers, Kyle

They don't make it up here. Makes me sad because I do like them. Sometimes some come back for a couple years but less and less and even less blooms and then nothing. If I planted 100 I can expect to see 50 live through the winter and wet spring. Only half of those 50 bloom and the following year it's halfed again the same way. I was kind of hoping Walmart was going to get some in as spring bulbs this year but they didn't. Last year they had a big bag for next to nothing but I passed because I was too busy. The notheast I think is just too cold and wet for them. I kind of see a bit of a pattern here. TX is dry compared to the east, so is most of CA. MS is a wet state, same for NJ and NH. MS is certainly mild enough but lots of rain. Anybody have luck in the northern plains states or provinces? They are treated as annuals here. Cheap enough so you don't bother digging and storing them. I really don't remember but I think walmart's cheap bag was 250 of them for $3.88. My husband bought some for the gardens at the state prison and kind of got mad at me when I told him they wouldn't make it. Couldn't understand why walmart would sell something that wouldn't survive. Actually Walmart's plant dept is full of perennials and shrubs that won't make a harsh winter up here.

Speaking of a curse... I've been having strange trouble with scarlet runner beans. Last year, a friend told me about how lovely they were and asked if he could plant them where they'd grow on my fence. I said yes and he put an entire packet in the ground, along ten feet of fence. He planted them in April, way too early (I didn't realize what he was out there doing until he came in and announced he was done). Most of them rotted in the ground. I assumed they all would and started to dig up the area in May. I discovered that three plants had made it, but one was already nibbled to the ground by a rabbit or other critter. In digging up the area to plant other stuff, I accidentally killed another. The last one struggled for a long time and eventually produced three beans. Only three. So this year I planted those three beans. All came up. I accidentally bumped one and it freakishly broke in half and died. Another had the growing tip damaged (I'm not sure by what) and never made it. The last grew slowly... so slowly... and produced three seed pods. I zealously guarded these pods against husband and children, reminding them every time we picked beans not to pick THOSE pods. Leave them be, let them ripen. Last week I cleaned out all the other plants growing on that fence and cut down the sunflowers, etc. I didn't have time to do it neatly, so there were a lot of stragglers. We had a house sitter over - the same friend who had wanted to plant the scarlet runners in the first place. We were in a hurry when we left and I didn't give any specific instructions about the garden (not that I'd even thought about it). When we came back and I was unpacking, I saw my garden basket near the door had four bean pods in it and one was a scarlet runner pod! I asked him, "What happened to the other two? This was on a plant with two other pods." He said, "What? Oh, well, the other ones didn't look very good. I think squirrels got at them. I threw them away." I have a bad squirrel problem, but I've grown beans for two years and I have yet to have a squirrel (or anything else) eat the bean pods. Hoping the squirrels had only chewed on the pods and there were a few seeds left, I asked where he'd thrown them away. He said the trash. So I looked. All I found was carefully hulled pods, hulled by a human. When he saw that I was looking, he said, "I just threw the beans out. They were kind of dry and hard." This is a nice guy. Were it nearly anyone else, I would suspect malice. But he's dumb and nice and well-intentioned. I took a deep breath. "Okay. Where did you throw the beans?" He said (and I'm not exaggerating or kidding here), "Just out in the back yard. I was hoping a squirrel or a bird might eat them... I'm sorry." I bought a flashlight (my old one was dead) and searched. I found three. This morning I found two more after carefully raking the area where I'd found the other three. That's probably all there were, as they weren't big pods. There are three beans still in the pod that was in the basket. I imagine that he thought he'd help finish cleaning off the fence and noticed a few bean pods. After that, it's sheer human perversity and the absurdity of life. Was he bored and decided to shred the pods, then tossed the seeds when he was done? If so, why carry the hulls inside to put in the trash? Did he think that the dried out pods wouldn't make good snap beans (I haven't grown dry beans so he hasn't seen that)? It's just weird. Plain weird. It's not a big loss to me, as I could just buy a packet of seeds and be as well off, maybe more. Plus the scarlet runners are apparently very accident-prone and don't grow well where I'm planting them. But it was bizarre that after two years of coddling, most of my seeds get tossed out so "a squirrel or a bird might eat them" by a well-meaning helper.

annalchyu, those juices that ran out are on the surface of the meat too. I have no concerns about bacteria and toxins in reusing the marinade as long as it is boiled. I'm not always in the mood to make a sauce so sometimes I throw it out but sometimes I boil it into a sauce. Even botulism toxin (which I wouldn't expect in the marinade) is broken down by boiling, for most of the other bacteria of concern it is the bacteria not toxins that are the concern. If that wasn't the case, eating the meat would be a problem too. Also, it depends what I've put in it. For example if it is a citrus juice based marinade, the sauce may taste better with a fresh squeeze of citrus in it instead of boiled to death citrus juice so I'd probably toss the marinade and start fresh for taste, not health reasons. fenworth, I usually deal with the BBQ utensil issue by leaving the business end of the utensil in the BBQ so it gets heated along with the meat.