Lisa Zahn

Okay, this is kind of depressing but it all works out fine in the end. This just would not leave my mind for half of last night. I don't claim to be a prophet on the future, and we can hope we never look back and call these days "Hard Times", except for so many they already are that it seems safe to say it. Maybe I should've kept this to myself, but I wanted to share... Kids, do you remember what we used to call the “good old days”, before the Hard Times came? Remember how we had those grocery stores, where you’d walk in and there was aisle after aisle of food? Most of it in cans and boxes, but also fruits and vegetables from all over the world. And meat, meat of all types from thousands of farms across the world. Why, there was even an entire aisle just of breakfast cereals. A hundred different types of cold, crunchy cereals that were pre-baked so we just added milk to them. They came in o-shapes and banana shapes and even leprechaun shapes! With little tiny things c...

I will add to yesterday's post with the long James Kunstler rema rks, that a third reason for the government to help the auto industry is to "bail out" the employees and retirees. I don't think anyone is going to make as much money as we have been in this country, especially those working in a failing industry that failed to innovate, failed to see past the dollar signs and is based on the use of a finite resource that is declining and getting more expensive already. However, the many employees in this country who are losing jobs and retirees losing benefits and pensions are going to need help. Obama is getting and will continue to get much criticism for being beholden to the unions, and he is certainly beholden to them. Many say unions have overstepped reality and that salaries and pensions have been overly luxurious, and I would tend to agree. However, it's hard to get far with that argument when the CEOs have been taking EXTREMELY luxurious salaries, bonuses an...

From James Howard Kunstler's post today . It's a good one. I don't know why I feel the need to let you all know this stuff, but I just think we all should be aware and start moving in a better, more sustainable direction. Emphases are mine. As the election campaign ground on like a 3000-mile race between a greyhound and an armadillo, the media kept harping on Barack Obama's vague promises of "change." We now know what the main promise was: regime change, right here in the USA, not in some place where the natives wear strange headgear. Mr. Obama's victory was a moment of epochal exhilaration, not least because he appears to be a decent and intelligent person self-made from a humble background -- someone who has personally bought tube socks in the K-mart, worried about money, and made many trips in a subway car. The current occupant of the White House, however, has sedulously prepared for his successor the biggest shit sandwich the world has ever seen...

I know I haven't blogged about food much lately. But yes indeed we've been harvesting from the garden and putting things up for the winter. Yesterday I madeand froze just a couple of quarts of applesauce from the apples that were starting to go bad in their storage boxes. We had found a bushel of Haralsons at the Farmer's Market for just $20, and I had bought a 1/2 bushel of Honeycrisps for $23 at a local orchard. With about 20 pounds of them I made and canned two double-batches of apple butter which turned out yummy! I found the best way to cook down apple butter is in a roaster or dutch oven in the oven at 325 deg. overnight. That worked better than the batch I put in the crock pot overnight, where it burned just a bit. The rest of the apples I stored. We got apple boxes from the Co-op (any grocery would do) that have pads with little apple-shaped dents in them to put between your layers of apples so they don't touch each other. We had been storing them in the garage ...