BonivaGScott's Profile

I never rinse. Cooking kills germs, rinsing does not.

You can steam chicken and fish on top of parchment paper. No hot plate.

I agree with those cautioning against ditching paper maps altogether. There was a story on NPR yesterday about people getting into serious trouble with their GPS in Death Valley. One person died.
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/26/137646147/the-gps-a-fatally-misleading-travel-companion

"Discarded" pallets may not actually be discarded. I used to work retail and after unloading, the pallets were placed outside near the dumpsters for a shipping company to pick up. They are reused over and over and over. If you take one that's sitting outside a establishment, check with the proprietors first and make sure you are not about to commit theft.
Pallet theft is being prosecuted:
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/may/06/news/adna-pallettheft6
http://www.palletenterprise.com/articledatabase/view.asp?articleID=1319
This has been pointed about before on Apt Therapy. RoseCampion pointed out in a previous post about pallet theft:
"Also, those pallets, just like milk crates, are used again. They are not just thrown away, but usually recycled. For use as pallets. Our pallets are picked up by our freight company to be used again. If someone were to take them, even though they just look discarded, that would be theft."

I live in Houston but spent summers with my grandparents in a small town of about 400 people. The grocery store was a tin-roofed shack run by my grandmother's brother. If he didn't stock it, we didn't eat it. The only pancake syrup was Brer Rabbit. The first summer I hated it, but it came to be my favorite even when I was back in the big city. Most of the produce we ate was grown by my grandparents or other family. We ate lots of fish caught by my grandfather and we got to see our sausages being made. My grandmother was a wonderful cook which made up for the lack of choice at the little store. The only herb I ever saw her use was dried sage when she made cornbread dressing around the holidays.

We put a similar radiant barrier in our attic a few years ago. Honestly we never noticed a difference but our attic did look like we were afraid of the government's TV rays getting to our brains. The roof was just replaced courtesy of the insurance company with radiant barrier on the decking and additional ventilation. We are about to replace our much compressed blown-in fiberglass with blown-in cellulose. What I gleaned from talking to the insulation contractors is that blown-in insulates better than mats. The cellulose is treated with a flame retardant but it's boric acid. The cellulose also doesn't lose its insulating ability due to compression like the fiberglass does. Fiberglass sometimes also contains formaldehyde.
We looked into the spray foam and were almost sold on it until I started finding stories of people driven out of their homes by long-lingering fumes. In fact our roofer had friends living at his house temporarily for that very reason. Apparently a lot rides on the ability of the crew applying the product and the chemicals are dangerous. All living things have to be out of the house for 24 hours. I don't think that is a DIY project.
When we were initially convinced foam was the way to go, part of the job was going to be removal of all the old fiberglass in the attic. To save $1200 my husband and I did it ourselves - in the summer, in Houston. That was enough DIY for me for a while. It's time for the pros to come and make it snow up there. Good luck and stay safe.

I second Greybeard. I love my Lodge pans.

"photo's" on the chalkboard - tsk tsk

Thanks for the recommendations! Added to Amazon wishlist. If you're daydreaming of farming, I would recommend "Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money We Made by It."
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11555
It's the story of two sisters (if I remember correctly) who move to the country to start a farm with no prior experience. They are quite dependent in the beginning on books themselves. I especially liked the passage where they puzzle over a book's advice about cutting up finished butter and removing the cow hairs and decide to strain out the hair before churning.
That's the only gardening/farming book I've actually read from Gutenberg, but they have quite a few on the site.

I tried the soap trick but still ended up with dirt under my nails. My hands typically look like I've been clawing my way out of a premature burial.