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A while back I had some bottles pop their lids in the canner. Might have gotten some pretty severe burns, if I hadn't had aloe vera on hand. Anyway, I've been trying to figure out what happened, and I think I found it. Part of the batch was new generic bottles, part old bottles. New lids, old...

My life's ambition!

I just spent weeks looking for a pair of pants for my BIL for Christmas. He's got some medical issues so his legs are easily 2-3 times as wide as normal. You could expand into that area as well. I did find a pair that I can alter to fit.

Or they blame it on the dog.

I was reading some research a few years ago where they were testing this. 25 years and still going strong.

The "stasis" vehicle is apparently a small sphere, about the size and shape of a walnut. I can't remember what it's called.

20 bottles of tomatoes so far, and 3 bottles of juice. The lid blew off two bottles yesterday, one while in the cooker and one while taking the bottles out. Generic new bottles with the lids they were sold with. I have four more bottles in the cooker this morning, one older bottle with an older...

This is a modular home. Somebody (probably some government bureaucrat) came up with the brilliant idea that there must be ventilation where the house meets the foundation. In certain areas that gap is as much as an inch wide. I would have to seal the whole foundation.

I think I caught the last of the house mice yesterday. The only mice I'm seeing at this point are the larger field mice. The silly things think they have squatters rights, and move in every winter. The field mice are more complicated, because they're not attracted to sugar or oils (peanut...

Tomatoes today. First batch is in the cooker.

My old house was in a dry riverbed. They had forced the creek into a culvert so they could build the subdivision. As I worked on improving the soil a lot of things started to appear from the seed bank--including a few morels! Apparently the morels can put themselves into a sort of stasis that...

I did foraged mushrooms once. Problem with foraged mushrooms is that the critters like them as much as we do so they often have bug holes. Finding enough to can is a problem so I end up eating them fresh. Such a sacrifice. :lau

In most fermentation processes the water is either drained off or used to store the product. I assumed peppers would be the same, fermented in water, then drained and the result used to make whatever. Apparently not. I don't have enough peppers left for another attempt so that will have to wait...

I did find some additional information, though. Hot sauce is fermented without water. I hadn't caught that before. The ratios are for the material (peppers) and not the water. So that suggests there is a great deal of water in peppers and the normal salt ratios wouldn't work. Most ferments you...

Kham yeast is not generally considered a bad thing. It's a wild yeast that gets into many fements and it's completely harmless. But its presence indicates that there might be imbalances in the ferment. It usually feeds on sugar (I didn't add any sugar, so obviously from the peppers) and can't...

Non-iodized table salt. For most ferments I use beween 2 and 3 T per quart. 5 t is just under 2 T. I normally make up a quart of brine and use what is necessary to cover the material. Too much salt might kill the bacteria and make the ferment fail that way, but it wouldn't make bad bacteria...

Only a canning question indirectly, as I was planning to can fermented hot sauce. Every time I try to ferment peppers they go sour. Does anyone have a process they use for fermented peppers? I used 3 T of salt in the fermentation bottle this time rather than making up a quart of brine and...

I've trapped probably 20 mice in the last week. 5 yesterday, one so far this morning. Only 1 trap, because the silly creatures actually ate the bait flapper off the other one. Why in the world would anyone make that particular piece out of plastic? I think we know... I removed their primary...

At that point some of my siblings were obsessed with a picture book called "Pickle chiffon pie" about a king who would eat nothing else.

My Dad once made Pickle Chiffon Pie for a company party. Nobody was willing to try it. Very sad. (Pistachio pudding and green food coloring in the topping. It was actually pretty good).