Ambergris

I gave my dogs the anti-candida pill the doctor gave me. Didn't do a thing for him.

We had a guy tell us to get our dogs off Beneful to clear their skin. We did. The chronic ear crud hasn't shown up since (but it's only been a couple of months). The "heat rashes" are still there, but shrinking instead of growing. Usually at the beginning of summer, they're growing.

He's on a mix of cheap meats (turkey necks, etc.), sweet potatoes, potatoes, and leftovers. We tried the bagged grainfree diet, but it costs as much as cooking for him and we don't know (as in really know) what's in it.

You start off with what I'd call an excellent list, except that I can't get tarragon to grow for me.

Lemon balm. Good tea for ladycramps, feeling generally bleah, mild general anxiety, light to moderate fever, and cold sores. Great to lure bees. Grows low (shin-high) and tidy, good for the front row. Perennial.

Cayenne for all kinds of problems. A cayenne pepper in a pot can be lifted every fall and kept alive indoors. Plant it up front, because it is much more refined-looking than most herbs and because you want to pick it over every day in the late summer.

Pennyroyal, unless you grow it in hanging baskets like I do. It creeps, and it really does help with the fleas. It also makes a good headache tea. In quantity, it can cause miscarriage.

My other ideas all would require rather more room than you have:

Turmeric, to fight infections, gingivitis, etc. (If you have real winters, you'd have to lift it every fall.)

Valerian for the back edge of the plot. Beware--it stinks and draws both cats and snails. It also grows as tall as me, although not as wide. Dig the roots in the fall, chop roughly, and run them through the dehydrator. Use the runners for your new plants.

Ginger, another tender root, for stomach troubles and coughs. It looks a little like bamboo without stalks. Mine doesn't flower.

Milk thistle, for the liver and gall bladder. It's slow to germinate, and prefers dappled shade in Florida. The seeds are the safest part to eat, and since I have bad luck with milky-sapped plants, the seeds are the only part I'll deal with. A good plant will about three dozen flowers will yield a handful of seed. Not for nursing mothers or lactating animals. It's a thistle, all stickery, so you'd plant it in the back, next to the valerian.

This takes a while to load but has lots of info:

http://www.crimson-sage.com/medicinal-plants-catalog-2012.pdf

You referred to weeds. Have you identified each of these weeds to make sure you're not trying to crowd out something you might actually want?

Consider purslane, which has an unusual nutrient pattern.

Consider a redbud, if you have the right climate. The shade it casts is lacy enough to not crowd out or shade out the other plants.

Milk thistle and motherwort might work there.

Pennyroyal...but don't feed it to your pregnant rabbits or goat etc.

Lemonbalm. I love lemonbalm.

Horehound. Mullein. Valerian.

Oh, the Russian oregano that you get in cheap seed packets isn't much good for spaghetti sauce, but is good medicinally. I used to use eardrops with it.

Remember that Yukon Gold only makes one layer of potatoes, no matter how you try to hill them gradually.

You will have babies! Damp (not wet) soil. They root/re-root with amazing ease.

Some strawberries have emery in them. They're also good for polishing off that line of rust the pins can pick up.

I still remember my little cousin standing in the living room holding the strawberry and whirling the tomato over his head, and the thread broke, and the tomato whizzed right past my grandpa's nose. He looked around and kept drinking his tea.

How many people who do sew also know why they should pass pins and needles through the "strawberry" attached to the tomato?

Thank you, LindaLou.

Why fight over the storage unit?

Drop the subject.

In June, go over there when you have time, alone. Take one box for shredding, one box for keeping, and one box to take home and decide about later. Store the keeping box on site, but mark it so you don't re-sort it.

Next trip, take three more boxes.

*If* your folks ever get the notion to go over and look through the unit, will they even notice that some of the junk is missing?

When you're down to just the keeper boxes, decide whether to get a smaller/cheaper unit or move it to their place. Don't ask. Don't discuss. Just take care of it for them.

I used a combination of Berlitz Kids and Family Circus when they were younger and Pimsleur when they got older.

I suspect this is why our ancestors got the idea of pickling, salting, or sugaring the crap out of food they wanted to last.

Do you have a propane cooker, like a turkey fryer or a fish fryer? You'd sure have to work at controlling the temps if you used that, though.

Drying frozen is much easier! The stuff is already blanched and cut into uniform pieces, and because the cell walls have been broken by the freezing process, the drying process from frozen to done takes less time than from fresh/blanched to done.

My results have been better from frozen. Maybe because I'm too impatient to do every step well.

How many tries did it take you to get through the CreateSpace meatgrinder?

I Grind My Own

 

 

For the pink tee:

 

Back Off! I'm Out of Estrogen and I Know How to Butcher!

My husband wants this made for me now.

One cup Jiffy Mix, two cups milk. Cook together for about five minutes, stirring often. When it looks like a thick, stiff batter, throw in half a stick of butter. Beat two eggs while the butter goes in, then stir them in. Then dump into a mixing bowl and beat for five minutes. Beat a little longer if the Jiffy Mix is older, to give extra fluffiness from the eggs. (Might want to use larger eggs or even throw in an extra white, if the mix is old.) Pour into greased, heated skillet and bake at 350 for twenty minutes or so. It should brown and look like cornbread. Only you serve it with a spoon.

Cornbread mix that doesn't rise as it should but still tastes okay makes good breading (such as for oven-fried fish sticks). Have you tried making spoon bread with it?

A fresh-picked avocado and fresh-picked persimmon sliced on some fresh-baked sweet-potato bread with crumbles of nitrite-free bacon. Picked-yesterday calamondin lemonade.

Yes, chewing that set off my tooth again. But at the moment it feels worth it.

My first ex was a Roberson.

I had yogurt yesterday for dinner. Things didn't go according to plan.

Macaroni topped with onion and beef gravy, with fresh lemonade and fresh satsumas. Tomorrow there will be sweet potatoes.

A very hardy kind of tangerine. They grow as far north as the top of Zone 8.

My husband made steak (chuck-eye, my favorite), chilled it, and sliced it cardboard-thin. Piled it on saltines for me. Had it with pumpkin/potato soup and a fresh-picked satsuma. Oh, was it good.

Probably more soup. My next dental appointment isn't until the 19th and I'm living on Naproxin and Excedrin (generic) until then.

I hope your dental work heals quickly and well.

I brought home a really expensive cup of good chicken stew from a restaurant. It was delicious. The rest of the family had peanut butter sandwiches.

Omelet. Same reason as yesterday.