Jaymes

And taken twice as long as I do when I cut open a mango. And my advice would be not to pull that sharp peeler toward your knuckles. I feel pretty sure that, even if you haven't inadvertently scraped a knuckle or two, I definitely would, given the couple-hundred or so mangos I peel each year. Ouch.

Here's what I do: Pasta e Fagioli Start with about 1 cup of dried white kidney beans. (If you're in a hurry, use canned.) In a large stew pot or Dutch oven, set the washed and picked-over beans to cook in about 1 qt flavorful chicken broth, along with 2 large cloves garlic, mashed and chopped. Bring the beans to a boil over high heat; then cover tightly and simmer slowly until they’re just barely tender. If they dry out before they're done, add a little more hot water/chicken broth/liquid, as needed. Monitor them very carefully, to be certain that you do not overcook them. You're going to add more ingredients later on and cook them some more and you don’t want them disintegrating into mush, so this is important. While beans are cooking, prepare your seasonings. Start with about as much good-quality, imported pancetta as you can afford. Try for at least ¼ pound. ½ pound is better. More than that is even more wonderful. If you’ve purchased it in a chunk, then chop it into medium-small dice. If you’ve bought slices, then julienne them. (Lately, I've been using a domestic brand that I buy at Costco/Sam's. It's not grand enough to just wrap around melon and serve, but cooked up in a soup, it's perfectly fine. And, it's affordable enough that I can use 1 pound, or even more.) Put chopped pancetta into a skillet along with a couple tablespoons good, flavorful olive oil, 1 white or yellow onion chopped, 1 carrot peeled and chopped, 1 rib celery chopped, 2 more large cloves of garlic mashed and minced, 2 bay leaves, and about a tablespoon each of fresh rosemary and thyme. Saute until onions are clear and carrots and celery are tender and the whole thing looks “done.” About 2/3rds of the way through the bean cooking time, add your seasonings to the bean pot. It takes about an average of 1 ½ hours for RG’s beans to get tender, so I add the seasonings at about the hour point. Stir in the seasonings, cover the bean pot and continue to let them simmer until just barely tender. When the beans are just barely tender, add about 1 cup tomatoes. You can use chopped fresh tomatoes, or canned diced or crushed tomatoes, or tomato sauce. I’ve used left-over marinara, and it was great. Give the pot a stir, and then turn heat to high. Add 2 cups more liquid – water or chicken broth. At this point, taste for salt, and add some if needed. When soup is boiling, add 1 ½ cups dry pasta. You can use small shells, elbow macaroni, ditalini, etc. Reduce heat to medium and simmer briskly until pasta is al dente. Adjust seasonings. We like crushed red pepper, so we add that, along with black pepper. Ladle soup into individual soup bowls and top with grated parmesan or Romano or whatever you like. Serve with crusty bread. I've just tried to think back over what I do, so hope I haven't forgotten anything.

I was going to make the exact same comment. My husband gave me one last summer for my birthday for my classroom. It sat unopened at home, but I brought it to school and use it every day. I buy a big jug of water to keep under the table. No muss, no fuss, and no cleanup. Perfect for the classroom. And I gave one to my elderly father (85 at the time) who was living alone. He really likes coffee, and is restricted to only one cup a day. He'd never brew up a pot for just that one cup, so he was just having a cup of instant coffee that he heated in the microwave. I bought him a Keurig and he loves it. I keep him supplied with the refills because they're expensive enough that he would feel wasteful and extravagant buying them himself, so he wouldn't. He uses that Keurig every single morning and often has a cup of hot chocolate in the evenings. There are not too many things that are not useful given the right situation. Even that crap white bread (that I didn't know existed until I was about ten and had it at a friend's house because it wasn't allowed in our house). Somebody must buy it because the stores are full of it. However, I did discover after moving to Texas that even that crap white bread is not only useful, but necessary, with Texas-style BBQ brisket. So there you go.

And it isn't just what you were raised on that affects what you put into your shopping cart and bring home. If you people are talking about going to someone's home and being served a mediocre meal and discovering that the weird potato salad was made with canned potatoes, and the lack-luster green beans just came out of a can and the whipped topping on the dessert was scooped out of a tub, well, I'm with you. But if you're saying that you look at those products in the market and cannot fathom a single reason why anyone would buy them, ever, here's what I guess is probably true about you: You're not old, with arthritic hands You're not old and no longer can drive and have to rely on a friend to take you to the grocery store once or twice a month You're not a college kid or someone else that lives in a room with only a mini-fridge and microwave and no stove or oven You don't live in a remote area where you have to drive far to get to a market and need to make it count when you do You don't have unreliable electricity You care a very great deal about food and never want to just eat something quickly and get right back to your painting or sewing or writing or other vocation or avocation that you do care a very great deal about You never stock up an RV or boat or cabin You never take long road trips with a bunch of children You don't have a lot of impromptu relatives or friends that love to pop in with no notice and expect to be fed You don't have a bunch of kids that sometimes get on your last nerve and you need to sling something together and get it on the table now You never go camping And finally, You need to get out more. Yes, the pleasures of a fine table reign supreme to most of us here, and most of us have the means and availability to facilitate one. But not to be able to even understand why anyone would ever buy prepared and processed convenience items, or junk snack foods, or non-perishables like Velveeta and assorted canned vegetables? You need to get out more.

There are many things you could do with those glass doors. You could frost or etch the glass, so that you couldn't really see the stuff inside. You could paint them, on the inside, or silver them so that they look like mirrors. You could line them with fabric, or put up shirred curtains. You could glue bits of colored glass to make them look like antique stained glass panels. You could replace them with wood panels. Seriously, if you don't like the clear glass, there are many ways to change that, and all it would take would be a kind of fun, crafty, weekend project.

That's pretty egregious, all right. And kind of funny for some reason. But I give folks on eG a pass. We have people posting here from all over the world and, for many, English is a second language. I'd hate to miss out on a great recipe for ceviche or stifado or harissa or something because someone was uncertain about their limited English skills and was afraid to post. For that matter, even a native English speaker with a limited education might be able to whip up a sublime Grits & Red Eye Gravy and be happy to tell me how to do it but be hesitant to post because of embarrassment regarding his or her language skills. But a mistake that egregious on a printed menu in the US? Sorry, no pass. That's inexcusable. And, back to the hard Italian "ch" in bruschetta and our collective failure to get it right... I thought of another Italian "ch" word that we've all been pronouncing correctly since childhood. Pinocchio.

It's at times like this I wish you Americans would find another word for the language you use and abuse. "Au jus" is not an English word (or even a word) it's a phrase... Well, to be fair, the tendency to misuse/mispronounce foreign lanaguage terms isn't unique, or even most pronounced in the US, it's prevalent the world over... I'm in total agreement with MJX. ... Even so, and even if the dictionaries list it as a correct plural, I still think it sounds like nails on a chalkboard when somebody says "shrimps" and isn't referring to verb for the process of fishing said critters (ie "Manolo shrimps for a living," but never "Manolo is eating shrimps for dinner.") Well, anytime you have over seven-billion human beings using something, in this case language, there are going to be a few anomalies. I'll confess I'm a "shrimps" offender. Having lived several places where "shrimps" is the norm, at first I repeated it a time or two because I thought it was cute, but then it sorta crawled into my lexicon and got stuck. Interesting that that one doesn't bother me so much. I guess because it's primarily a natural conclusion reached by people for whom English is a difficult challenge, and they've learned that, in English, most plurals are created by adding an "s" to the singular. So "shrimps" makes sense. At least they're trying. The "broo-SHETTA" thing in the US, though, puzzles me. I mean, we manage to get right that hard Italian "ch" in so many other words: mocha, zucchini, gnocchi, Chianti, just to name a few. How did bruschetta get so screwed up? ETA: And none of this pronunciation thing bothers me so much as the abuse of the apostrophe. Just a few days ago, I was reading a menu that listed the various categories: Appetizers, Soups, Salads, etc. And then it got to: Steak's. Speaking of the possessive, which we suddenly are, what on Earth could have possessed them to inexplicably throw in that apostrophe when they hadn't talked about "Appetizer's, Soup's, Salad's"? And one of the "Steak's" was "served in it's own juice." Nobody's perfect, and the exact rules of grammar can be argued endlessly by scholars, but really, how hard is it to distinguish between "it's" and "its"? I posit that it's not difficult at all. One is a contraction. So, would they have meant the above to read, as it properly would, "served in it is own juice"? Of course not. This menu looked to be professionally printed. Couldn't someone somewhere along the line do a little proofreading? If the owner/manager/whomever isn't really good with grammar and punctuation, is it asking too much to have someone else read it over before investing your money in a final product that would be difficult and expensive to change? Hardly Earth-shattering issues. Minor irritants. Minor, but just irritating enough to keep us all chattering. Right? And so interesting that one person's complaint-worthy irritant is always somebody else's no big deal.

And... Just for the record, I, too, agree that "remuneration can't be the litmus test for whether or not someone can be called a journalist." Nor did I anywhere so assert. In fact, there very clearly is no "litmus test." If there were, we wouldn't be having this discussion. I'm not so stupid as to say that the minute someone pays you for your words/reporting/reviews, etc., you're automatically a "journalist." And that if no one ever has, you absolutely, definitely are not. That would be silly. And demonstrably incorrect. I don't have any hard and fast and true and unassailable definition as to what is a journalist, any more than does anyone else. I'm just saying that, in my view anyway (and our perception is what I thought this thread was about), if you want to call yourself a legitimate journalist, and you expect your claim to be taken seriously, having been paid for your work would help to substantiate it.

So, "Amateur Journalist"? Not a contradiction in terms? By that definition, I guess all bloggers qualify. Okay, so I'm being flip. But I'll repeat that I do see journalism as a profession, complete with the parameters that define professionalism in other disciplines. And when you get good enough, and competent enough, and serious enough, and "professional" enough, that others respect your work enough to pay you to do it (even if, as Steven points out, occasionally you choose to do it for little or no remuneration), I think you've crossed some sort of line beyond which you can be said to have earned the title of whatever it is. In this case, a "journalist." That's not the only distinction, obviously. Obviously. But in my view it's an important one. Without that distinction, I think it's pretty difficult to determine a "real" journalist from some blogger that just says (and thinks) that's what he/she is. And when they tell you that they're a "journalist," and you ask them if anyone has ever paid them for their writing, and they say, um, well, no, not really, I kinda think that sums it up right there.

Too right! . . . . I think that regional dismissive prejudice is so pervasive and strong that, sadly, it would have carried more weight to say that "He lives in New York City where he is a day laborer" than "He lives in Chicago where he writes for the Times." It also stuns me that, in this day of instant information, when it would have been so easy to discover the credentials of "Marilyn and family" (credentials that include not only a son that writes for the WSJ, but a daughter who was a practicing attorney in Hong Kong and probably fluent in Cantonese, among other lofty and sophisticated and intellectual accomplishments) before sneering and jeering at them, one wouldn't take five minutes to do enough research to know exactly at whom one is sneering and jeering. Oh, please. Enough already the 'us and them' regional nonsense. No one but a hick (by which I mean a state of mind, undefined by place of origin or socioeconomic status) living in a major urban area on one of the two coasts dismisses Chicago as insignificant, and who cares about these people? First - I was exaggerating to make a point. I'm sorry; I suppose I should have added a disclaimer, but I thought it was obvious. And Second - I have actually lived in both New York City and the LA area and my son lives in the SF Bay area where I visit often and I have definitely heard "coasters" refer to all of Illinois, including Chicago, as being in "flyover country." They'll admit that Chicago is something of an oasis of culture and influence in what they see as a vast sea of middle-brow, dismissible mediocrity, but it's only an oasis of culture and influence over the Midwest. And of absolutely no importance whatsoever to California or New York. And they certainly never would want to lower themselves to actually go live there. ___________

Too right! I hate to say it but I honestly believe that the rebuttal to whomever it was that denigrated the "type of restaurant that Marilyn and family patronize" (or words to that effect) was taken more seriously by the place of her son's residence (New York City) than his profession (writer for the Wall Street Journal). I think that regional dismissive prejudice is so pervasive and strong that, sadly, it would have carried more weight to say that "He lives in New York City where he is a day laborer" than "He lives in Chicago where he writes for the Times." It also stuns me that, in this day of instant information, when it would have been so easy to discover the credentials of "Marilyn and family" (credentials that include not only a son that writes for the WSJ, but a daughter who was a practicing attorney in Hong Kong and probably fluent in Cantonese, among other lofty and sophisticated and intellectual accomplishments) before sneering and jeering at them, one wouldn't take five minutes to do enough research to know exactly at whom one is sneering and jeering.

Of course. And all of this is pretty ill-defined, which is why we're discussing it. But I consider "journalism" to be a profession. And much of what defines a profession involves being competent enough at it that someone is willing to pay you for it. I think that remuneration goes a long way in distinguishing being a "hobbyist" from being a "professional" in almost every discipline. Including this one. I mean, that is the generally-accepted distinction, isn't it? Amateur? Hobbyist? Professional? ETA - And the fact that someone HAS been willing to pay you for it supports my argument. Even if some of the time you choose to do it for free.

Not sure there are ever going to be any sort of definitive parameters. There seems to be a perception that being considered to be a "journalist" is a title and distinction one earns over a period of time. And I do think remuneration counts for something. If, for example, mkayahara's previously-mentioned ads on the blog are paying the bills, rent, etc., enough so that mkayahara is earning a living from writing, and years pass, at some point... Why not?

I don't know, exactly. But as I said, just talking over what might and what might not count in your favor if you want to call yourself a "journalist" and be taken seriously (and don't have a degree in journalism or belong to the SPJ or something definitive), the fact that someone finds your work professional and worthwhile enough to pay you for it might count on your side of the ledger.

So if I have ads on my blog, then I'm good, from your perspective? I don't know exactly. Not sure ads on your blog counts the same as being paid a salary of some sort, like per word, or per inch, or per piece, or whatever. But I suppose it's a step in the right direction. As others have said, there seems to be no specific "qualification" or "disqualification." But I think being paid for your work might be one of the factors in your favor. Obviously, there's lot of schlock journalism for which folks are paid. But schlock journalism seems to count. I think if your ads are lucrative enough to be paying your bills, that should count for something.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think some sort of remuneration for your work might be a helpful qualification for determining who is, and who is not, a journalist.

And until your banana tree grows big enough to provide you with leaves, you might just check out a local Mexican market. I've bought frozen banana leaves in markets all over the US, so I'd bet you can find some locally. Also, let me add my kudos to PanCan for this thread, and for many more interesting and insightful contributions to eG. How does that old saying go...? PanCan Cook? Did I get that right? I sure think so.

In a previous life, I entertained a great deal more than I do now, and here are some ideas that always went over well. (Keep in mind that I have no idea as to what you can find locally, so I realize some of these ideas may not be practical. Also, I know that much of this you probably already know, but figured the best thing was just to toss it all out there, and you can take what might be helpful, and ignore what's not.) Tea sandwiches: First, the bread. Keep in mind that you can use a variety of breads (white, wheat, rye, cinnamon and raisin, pumpernickel, mini-croissants, etc.), and that alone makes it look like you're offering up a large selection, even when you're not. A favorite trick in the US is to spread your sandwich filling on a flour tortilla (I like to grill them briefly first, just to get rid of that raw flour taste), then roll it up and slice into pinwheels. If you don't have flour tortillas, then take slices of white bread, flatten them, spread on your sandwich filling, roll them up and slice. As for fillings: almost anything using cream cheese as a base can make a tasty tea sandwich but I had particularly good luck with cream cheese & sliced olives (with and without pimentos) (and with and without chopped nuts); minced candied ginger and rum; chopped eggs with minced green onions and a bit of mustard and capers or rinsed caviar; chopped dates and walnuts; sliced cucumbers of course, but don't overlook other vegetables. Very thinly-sliced or minced sweet red onions with cream cheese, a little mayo, and grated Parmesan is terrific. Truthfully, it's impossible to list all the potential combinations. If the mixture seems too thick, thin it with a little milk or cream or mayo. For seasonings, in addition to the obvious salt and pepper, try a favorite blend of seasoning salt, celery salt, bottled salad dressings (or mixes like Good Seasons "Italian"), various paprikas, favorite herbs like tarragon, oregano, basil, Tabasco or other hot sauces, lemon juice, rum or brandy or liqueurs (orange liqueur goes with many things; Khalua is good with cream cheese and chopped nuts), Worsty, soy sauce, Thai sweet chili paste, jarred pickled ginger, or any of the other thousands of Asian sauces, pickles, chutneys (I really adore Major Gray), pastes, whatever. Stand at the "Asian sauces and seasonings" section in your grocery store and just let your imagination run. As someone said upthread, a sprinkle of curry powder makes many things seem more interesting and tasty and I'm never without it. Think like a mad scientist in your laboratory and mix up small batches of whatever sounds appealing or whatever you have on hand. Peruse recipes for various dips, spreads, cheese balls, etc., that aren't specifically "fillings for tea sandwiches," but that would work perfectly. Various salads: ham salad, tuna salad, chicken salad, egg salad, Asian pork salad made with minced pork leftover from last night's dinner and some finely-chopped green onions and water chestnuts. Try various fruits, fresh or dried, mixed in - apples, grapes, raisins, craysins, chopped dried apricots, etc. Meats: all sorts of potted meat spreads can be really good and an excellent way to use up leftovers of whatever was your main protein course the night before. If you want to do small sandwiches with sliced meats - ham, roast beef, turkey, whatever, it works much better to use those shaved "deli-slices." If you have a meat slicer that will slice it that thinly, that's best, but if you don't, buy it sliced that thinly. Nothing is worse than trying to take a bite of a ham or other meat sandwich, and getting a piece that you can't bite through, and you pull the whole slice of meat out and it flops onto your chin, dripping honey mustard sauce all over your tatas. A wedge of tasty cheese always puts smiles on faces. Offer a selection of sliced cheeses, or put out a chunk of bleu, drizzled with honey and chopped walnuts. Serve one of those impressive brie or Camembert wheels baked in pastry. In the American South, you're always going to get Pimento Cheese (most people just mix it up without a recipe, or buy it already made at their local market, and you can google for a plethora of recipes, but here's a start: Pimento Cheese ) either in small finger sandwiches, or spread into celery stalks, or scooped into bell pepper boats or something. But it's ubiquitous. Also ubiquitous are Pecan Tassies for a sweet: Pecan Tassies. For many years, I seriously don't think I went to a single coffee or tea where there wasn't a pretty plate of Pecan Tassies set upon the table. The quintessential Southern ladies' gathering dessert. Don't forget fresh fruit. It's always welcome. Cut up some apples or melons or pineapples or other seasonal fruit and put it into a Tupperware or other plastic container, toss with 7-Up or Ginger Ale or lemon juice or Fruit Fresh, or something to keep it from turning brown, chill and offer with a smooth dipping sauce made of yogurt or sour cream or Nutella or something. I don't know if you can get Bisquick over there, but good ol' American shortbread takes about 12 minutes to make with that recipe on the box, and it's not too sweet (similar to scones), and they're easy to slide off of your baking sheet, put into a ziplock bag, carry to the party, and then plate up with a ladle of sliced strawberries over, and a squirt or spritz or dollop of sweetened whipped cream on top. Don't overlook "Pigs in a Blanket" - which for years, I admit I shied away from because it seemed sorta "low rent" or something, I don't know exactly, but the truth is that people love them. Again, most folks just make them up without a particular recipe, but in case you're not familiar with them, here's a recipe: Pigs in a Blanket And many seafood options, too. Salmon spread is always good, but smoked oysters, sardines, etc., can produce great snacks as well. Here's a crab spread that is great on tea sandwiches, or with crackers, or spread into celery stalks: Crab Spread 8 oz. cream cheese, softened to room temp 1 can crab meat, drained, carefully picked through, or you can use some chopped imitation crab meat 1 tsp horseradish 2 T mayo chopped green onions to taste Salt & pepper & paprika & hot sauce & garlic powder & lemon juice or other seasonings to taste. Combine everything and put it in a tightly-sealed container. Chill until firm. You can either mold this onto a plate for serving, or pat it into a log, or whatever other shape you find attractive, and surround with crackers. You can roll it in chopped parsley or almonds or something if you'd like. Or, as I said, you can serve it in celery stalks, or stuffed into cherry tomatoes, or as a filling in tea sandwiches. Here's another seafood-based spread: Shrimp Butter 8 oz cream cheese 1 US stick of butter (1/4 pound of butter, not "light butter" or margarine or other butter substitute because it won't work) Put the cream cheese and the stick of butter into a med-sized mixing bowl and allow to come to room temperature. Combine well. Add: 1 can cooked cocktail shrimp, drained 1/4 C mayonnaise 1 tsp lemon juice Salt & pepper & white pepper & Tabasco or other hot sauce to taste 1 Tbl grated onion. Blend thoroughly and chill until serving time, to let the flavors marry. To serve, you can either allow it to come to room temperature and serve with spreaders and crackers or toast points or crostini, or spread chilled onto bread for tea sandwiches. And here's a personal favorite Tea Sandwich recipe (from Afternoon Tea at the Empress Hotel): Empress Hotel Shredded Carrot & Ginger tea sandwiches Mini-muffins, of course, and cookies. Oatmeal cookies always went over well. Not so sweet as some. And the various "breads" that are more like cakes: zucchini bread, banana nut bread, brown molasses and raisin bread, carrot bread, applesauce bread. Take some softened cream cheese for spreading over. You can even serve soups. Cold, smooth soups seem to work best - the ones that you can basically sip without needing a spoon. Take it in a thermos, and then serve by pouring into those small clear plastic cocktail or wine glasses. Cold avocado soups are so wonderful, as are fruit soups - cherry, peach, etc. I had a great cold apple soup served just that way, from a thermos, while attending a "formal picnic" (I know that sounds like a contradiction, but that's what it was) while visiting an apple hacienda in Mexico. A few general tips: if you're serving tea sandwiches with some sort of mayo-based filling, like chicken salad, tuna salad, ham salad, etc., spread a thin layer of butter on the bread first to seal it and keep it from becoming soggy. White bread, in particular, can be difficult to spread with a thick filling. It can be easier if you freeze the bread, and work with it while frozen. You know, I envy you. I haven't done this sort of entertaining in years, but I always thought it was so much fun. You can basically just mix up anything that suits your whimsy, that flits across your fancy, and give it a try. You're not investing much time, money or energy in it and if something doesn't turn out great, you can toss it away without a second thought. It's not like you've ruined an entire $50 standing rib roast and now you have nothing to serve the 12 hungry dinner guests becoming restless in your living room. So have fun, and report back!

I'm not from the deep south. I was born (at home on the farm) in western Kentucky where there is a lot of "bottomland" where corn produces enormous yields (as does sorghum) and wheat does not do as well. In the old days when wheat flour was scarce and expensive, most people made cornbread for every day and saved the flour for making biscuits (on Sunday) and cakes. The corn was sweet enough without the need to add sugar. There are many variations of cornbread and I like several but I really don't like the "Marie Callender" cake type, it falls apart if you try to pick it up and no way could it be dunked in bean soup - and the flavor wouldn't complement the beans anyway, at least to my taste. That's my personal preference and everyone is entitled to make and eat the type they like. Just don't ask me to bake it for them... I've lived a lot of places, but my heritage is pretty deep south. And it seems to me that the misunderstanding about what my family also called that sweet "cakey ol' Yankee cornbread" is that, for the most part, Yankees just don't understand the way that southerners eat cornbread. It's just exactly like Andie says. Cornbread in the South traditionally has always been served as a staple - "the bread" - with your meal. Most cultures on the planet serve some sort of savory bread thing with meals. It's not sweetened. Cornbread took the place of unsweetened white bread at the dinner table. That ol' Yankee sweet cakey cornbread, like Marie Callender's, can be plenty tasty when served with butter and molasses or sorghum or something, as a sweet. A dessert. But it's no good when served with your meal. You'd no more serve that sweet cornbread with your greens, beans and ham than you'd serve a Danish with your pork chop and peas.

Lots of varieties of soup go quite well with a few handsful of yellow rice with peas, onions and mushrooms tossed in.

I also buy butter in 1-lb blocks. But I am accustomed to the convenience of the sticks for measuring, and also for serving on American butter dishes that are designed for the sticks. So as soon as I bring home my block of butter, I carefully peel back the foil wrapper, take a very long knife, and cut it into sticks. Then I wrap the sticks individually in foil and put them back into the fridge. As you no doubt know, it's pretty easy to guesstimate how large a slice one needs of those sticks to make 1 TB, or whatever. This is easy to do and makes life much easier where measuring butter is concerned. In fact, it really irritates me if somebody gets to that 1-lb block of butter before I do and starts just hacking it off willy-nilly. Totally messes up my measuring system.

I've lived across the south and completely agree. I've never heard anybody but a Yankee trying to be cute say y'all when referring to the singular. And it really grates. Because "you all" is so clearly a plural. And, just like Blue Dolphin explained, the plural of "y'all" is indeed "all y'all." But to determine a true southerner, see if they ever use the possessive. To a couple of members of a group, you might say: "Are y'all coming to the football game tonight?" And then to the entire group: "All y'all?" And then the possessive: "Cause I've got all y'all's sweaters in the car." To Rico - We love that Texas Pecan coffee as well. I send pounds of it to my son and his family out in San Jose, CA. It's really wonderful stuff. Loving your blog... Thanks.

So, you've been at it for several weeks now... How goes it? Successes? Failures? And, most important (to me anyway): are you enjoying it?

I'd divide it into sections and freeze it. There's nothing in it that shouldn't freeze well.

Well, I thought I should come back here and correct myself... I did a little googling just out of curiosity and, according to Wiki, Calamondin/Calamansi are a hybrid that are "unknown in the wild," so I guess I was wrong when I said that they grew wild in the Philippines. But it certainly seemed to me like they did, since they were everywhere, including along the sides of the roads. And, it appears that they are so ancient that nobody knows for sure where they originated, but that most folks think it was probably China. Calamondin/Calamansi - Wiki I know that the Filipinos use them for a great many medicinal uses, but was surprised to read this: "Childbirth"? Who knew? Citrus plants are really quite wonderful, it seems.