I have a cousin who wrote a cookbook as he used to be a chef in his earlier years. He was also in acting and was a radio announcer for a radio station in VT. His cookbook didn't sell as well as he hoped. I did provide him with a few favorite recipes however, just to help fill some additional pages. Because these threads tend to drop off after a preset amount, we have no control over very old posts, unless they are 'resurrected' before dropping off. Writing a synopsys of all the facts is a daunting task. I just hope that new-bees spend a few minutes to do searches before sending personal emails. Had I not taken the extra effort to copy and paste the above, it would have gone unshared. Once in a while I come up with a neat trick, and always like to share the experiences. My most sucessful has been to use the acid blend when making jellies. I have to say that I have not seen a single jar of my jellies spoil even after using all Splenda as a sweetener. Several years ago, no one ever heard of Clear Jel, until I posted links and mentioned using it, as well as the Pomona pectin. These 'tidbits' are now showing up in real web search links to the GW pages. Nice to know that they are not buried long after a few 100 links before them. As to been there, done that, I sure have had my share of that!

Smak n' Tackle It's an old from-the-hills recipe for a skillet macaroni 1 dish meal. 1 1/2 pounds ground chuck 8 ounces macaroni, uncooked 1/2 cup onion, chopped 1 green pepper, chopped 2 cans tomato sauce (8 oz each) 1 cup water 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 1 large tomato chopped Salt and pepper to taste Brown beef in a large cast iron skillet over medium heat. Remove beef from skillet and sauté raw macaroni, onion and green pepper in the meat juices over low heat until macaroni is golden yellow. Return meat to skillet then add tomato sauce and remaining ingredients except chopped tomato; stir. Cover and simmer over low heat about 25 minutes, or until macaroni is tender. Top with chopped tomato at serving. Serve with a side salad. Variations: sub 1 pint stewed tomatoes or 1 pint salsa (Annie's of course) for the onions, pepper, and 1 can of the tomato sauce. Serves 6. Name comes from "smack your lips and tackle it". ;) Dave PS: 54 huh? Just a spring chick! I can't even remember 54. :^(

I somewhat follow Bumble's way although we rarely eat fried foods, we don't do fast-foods and we eat less meat than we used to. We do not eat red meat very often. This past weekend, I had the first steak I have had in many months. We did grill burgers over the holiday. We've also cut down on cheese, much as I love it. When I had my last bloodwork my doctor said my good cholesterol had risen and the only thing I had done different was cutting back on the cheese. ?? There have been many studies on red meat affecting our health, and it's the cancer studies that concern me. So, we do eat it occasionally. We also limit (try) the "white stuff" and do not eat much processed food at all. Bumble, I thought you were doing Paleo or some other plan? I remember reading your post about it on the cooking forum some time ago.

Since my beans were all prepped and ready to go, I went ahead last night and processed half my jars with plain water. For the other half, I included the stock that had been chilled, fat removed, then double strained. And I did exactly what you suggested, of increasing the processing time by 10 minutes, so I think I did okay. I normally don't guess at any processing times or procedures, but I felt pretty confident. If your answer had been different (and I was already thinking about the possibility of any residual fat coating the food), I could have opened the jars, increased the head space by a little more and frozen them instead. I planned ahead for that by using straight sided wide mouth pint jars. It's still been considerably less than 24 hours. This was my first time canning green beans, and I did raw pack simply because it was easier. Do you have a preference? Thanks so much for the advice and opinions on this. Jill in Texas