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There's a prize? Sweet! I suppose I'll have to share my prize with my old neighbor, Steve, because he's the one who gave me the name :) He didn't happen to mention the goats, though.

Goats, huh? This stuff is horribly invasive at my place, as I can see it is at yours. I've heard it called horse weed, but I'm not sure of the proper name. Looks like it's time to get some goats and put them to work!

Thank you for posting this question. Our cherry jam didn't set up, and I came here to find out how to fix it. Now you've convinced me NOT to fix it. My cherry 'sauce' is going to be awesome on ice cream and pancakes :) On a side note - we figured out what we did wrong, and the second...

I tried the vinegar, and it worked like a charm. I even mixed it about half and half with water. I had one jar with something brown staining it, and it didn't come clean. All the other jars look great. Thanks everybody for the help!

I wasn't impressed. We experimented with two of them on our porch (in addition to 34 regular tomato plants in the garden). They grew lots of green, but they had to be watered EVERY day, sometimes more than once. They were always dry, and of the few tomatoes that actually grew, we only picked...

We had a similar situation when we bought our property. The previous owner had thrown out a bunch of jars of who knows what into the ditch out back. Most of the jars were broken, but some were not. I have no idea how long they sat outside in the woods before we found them. I wasn't into...

Thanks for the info. I am also in Illinois, and we recently started having a cloudy film on many of our dishes after running through the dishwasher. It didn't happen until we had our dishwasher fixed because of a recall. I don't know what they did to it, but it hasn't cleaned our dishes well...

I thought I had heard vinegar, so I soaked one of them today. It didn't seem to make a difference. I guess I can fill up my sink with some vinegar water and soak them for a while. That'll make the kitchen smell nice. :lol: Maybe I'll try some bleach first.

I have a bunch of old canning jars that have been in my barn for several years. Many of them have a brown or white film inside, and I'm having a difficult time getting it off. I've run them through the dishwasher, I've scrubbed them, and it's still there. What is it, and how do I remove it?

I heard that ants can't digest cornmeal, so if you leave little piles where you see them, they'll eat it and die. Does anybody know if this is true? Seedlings work great in the little starter containers that you can buy at any home improvement or farm supply store. Keep them moist, but not...

I read that you're supposed to blanch celery for a couple of weeks before you harvest it to get rid of the bitter flavor. It sounds to me like this simply means you mound dirt up around the stalk. Do I understand this correctly? How much of the plant should be buried? It's my understanding...

I have two pear trees, so I'm always looking for good ideas. Pear butter is really good. My recipe has cinnamon and nutmeg. I've made something I call "Pear sauce". It's basically applesauce, but I use pears instead of apples. You can also do a web search for pear bread. I have a very good...

We tilled up a dead area of our garden a couple of weeks ago, and we planted some fall crops. The soil now looks like somebody ground up red bricks and sprinkled it everywhere. We picked up a chunk of dirt yesterday, and it's just on the surface. I would call it the beginning stages of moss...

A food scale would be ideal, but not everybody has one handy. The last time I made salsa, my batch was 7 lbs of tomatoes before coring and skinning, so probably 6-6.5 lbs after. It turned into about 8 cups chopped. That's pretty close to Journey's 3.3 lbs for your 4-5 cups. By my math, 20...

I have an Excalibur 9 tray dehydrator. It's a little pricey, but it has lots of space, and I think it does a great job. It blows the hot air horizontally, instead of vertically, so the drying is more uniform.

I agree with the others that it'll probably be fine. Do you cook your salsa, or eat it fresh? If you're used to having it fresh, canning it will change it a little, so you might want to try a small batch and see what your family thinks. All of the salsa recipes that I've ever used have you...

I love my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. I also often use Joy of Cooking, Ball Blue Book, and Putting Food By. I have a couple of the AAL (Aid Association for Lutherans) yearly cookbooks that are a lot of fun. I'm not sure how you get them unless you're a member. I got one through our...

I'm not familiar with Lebanese squash, but from your post it sounds like they can be baked in sweets similarly to zucchini. When I have extra zucchini or yellow squash I shread them, blanch them, then freeze them in pre-measured amounts in freezer ziploc bags. I mark on the bags that it's 1...

I've put different items in my dehydrator before. If you have something with a strong smell, it can transfer, but most things won't. My only advice if you're going to mix items is to either put anything that might drip on the bottom or put wax paper or saran wrap in between the layers. You...

If you're looking for easy salsa, Mrs. Wages makes a great mix. All you add are tomatoes and vinegar. We like the hot salsa better than the regular salsa. It's really not that hot. Sometimes we'll go all out and make salsa from scratch, but the mix is just so EASY. They also make a very...