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My readers ask such good question! In the post about hatching my goose eggs renn of rennratt left this comment.

renn said: What are the differences (overall) between different breeds of geese? I understand appearance, but are there qualities that shine in the various breeds? Do you eat goose eggs? Or geese in general? I am fascinated by this.

Let's talk about the incredible edible egg. Not just chickens eggs. Most every fowl egg that I know of is edible. They are. You can eat all sorts of delicious eggs and probably have and may not have known it.

Goose and duck eggs are great for baking. They have a much bigger yolk and make a much richer baked product. Cakes are to die for when baked with duck eggs in place of chicken eggs. Quail eggs are often used for gourmet hors' dourves. You just never know where a different fowl egg will pop up in your diet. People also eat ostrich, rhea and emu eggs too.

 

In this photo is a sampling of eggs I have on hand. From largest to smallest are goose, duck, chicken, jumbo guinea and smallish guinea. The very small guinea egg is about the size of a bantam chicken egg. It would take 3 of those to make a large standard egg in your cooking recipes.

A farm fresh egg has a different taste when compaired to a commercially produced egg. It does take a while to get used to a fresh egg because they are so much richer and have a better flavor. Eggs don't take on flavors when the hen eats wild onions or garlic. But that is not to say what they eat doesn't cause a difference in the eggs when compared.

Farm fresh eggs from a small backyard coop are generally much deeper orangey in the yolks. The whites look cloudy. All of this is a good thing. Hens that are able to freely choose what they eat and are given a much wider diet have a more healthy egg. It has been proven under laboratory testing. Backyard, free range eggs have much higher Omega-3 fatty acids.

 

The orangey yolk is from the wide diet the chickens eat. Chickens are naturally omnivours. They do eat meat and they do eat pleants. Factory hens are fed a commercial mix of feed that is manufactured to have the least waste material and the most utilization in the chicken body.

Backyard chickens get more than feed. They eat bugs and green grass. Many are catered to and get treats just because they are pets more than egg producers.

My own chickens get all of the meat scraps from my kitchen and alot of my vegetable scraps - I have to give some to my goats too. Also my chickens eat grass. They eat bugs. I often cook rice and mix it with yogurt for good probiotics. Chickens will also catch and eat mice, lizard, small snakes and other little critters. This makes deep rich yolks. When I make my 12 eggs pound cake the cake turns yellow/orange from the yolks not a pale yellow or white. Also a cloudy tight white  means an egg is super fresh as the carbon dioxide hasn't had time to dissopate through the shell. You want the yolk to sit up high on top of a tight white. This is getting the best of egg goodness.

This is true for most eggs. Turkeys, ducks, chickens, guinea, pheasant, quail, etc all eat the same things. The eggs are enrichened in the same manner. Geese, however, are different.

 

A goose is a herbivor. It only eats plants. It might swim like a duck but it doesn't eat fish or bugs or other creepy crawlies. Geese are best when they pasture graze. Their diet consists of good green grass in a nice wide field and a clean water source to keep their nares clean and clear.

It was once customary and still is with the English to raise geese. Christmas goose has been popular since Victorian days. Having spent the past 3 years looking for a goose for Christmas dinner and not finding one I decided I was tired of searching for the mountain. I started moving dirt and am building my own moutain -so to speak. I went in search of eggs for breeds of geese that were noted to make the best table birds. There are breeds of geese raised for their liver - mmmm, pate.

 

There are many kinds of geese. African, American, Buff, Emden, Toulouse, Brecon Buff, Buff Back, Grey Back, Pomeranian, Chinese, Pilgrim, Roman and more including canadian and wild geese. Even some real eye candy geese like Sebastopol. I should be getting some eggs for some Sebastopol next week. I am thrilled!

The heavier breeds are good for eating. I did a lot of research and found the most recommenations for embdens as table birds. Those are what I am raising for meat. There are others that are better at laying more eggs. I have some mutt geese growing out and who knows if they will fatten out for meat or be good layers. I have to wait and see. My embdens should be ready late this month. It takes 28 - 35 days for them to hatch. An entire month! The waiting is long and the hatching is longer. Geese are the hardest to hatch.

I don't have a pond. I bet you wonder how I will be able to raise waterfowl on dry land? They live just find with a kids wading pool to dip in to. It would be perfect to have a pond, even a wet weather pond. I am asking Steve repeatedly to build me one. We'll see. Maybe by next spring I'll have one. Fingers crossed.

My oldest geese are four weeks old. They don't need as intensive care as chicks. In fact my geese are turned out now. No heat lamps, tending to themselves. I make sure they have clean water and they graze and nap in the sun. I also give them a dish of game bird feed to supplement them as they are still growing and have not feathered in yet.

I am raising Chickens, geese and guineas.  Turkeys will come this month and hopefully in 2 weeks my ducks will hatch. This is mostly breeding stock for next years big meat harvest for the winter freezer.

Steve hunted this past fall and the wild goose he brought home was delicious. I hope our home grown Christmas Goose is equally as good.

 

I have a barn full of pullets. A pullet is a female chicken under one year old. After one year they are hens. So, I have about 40+ pullets who became 19 weeks old monday. When they start laying I can expect at the height of the season to collect somewhere around three dozen eggs a day.

Between the ages of 18 - 24 weeks most pullets will begin to lay eggs. They will be small at first but will get bigger and more uniform as the pullet matures. There is no magic number to predict when the pullets will begin to lay. It is sort of like with us females. Mother natures takes her own course and you just can't predict the day and time that the moment will happen.

The cycle for the eggs often follows a 25 hour pattern. If an egg is laid at 8am today it might be 9am tomorrow before that next egg gets laid. But that is not always the rule. Some hens will lay like clockwork at the same time every day. Some hens might lay an egg every other day.

It is very exciting as you approach the age of laying. It is also very frustrating looking each and every day for those first eggs. I am guilty of checking often and then checking again.

Now here is a little lesson - you do not need a rooster to have eggs - beautiful farm fresh eggs. You only need a rooster if you want those eggs to eventually incubate (with or without a hen) and hatch out lovely little chicks.

Please take note of what I am about to tell you -

1. There is not one bit of difference between a brown and a white egg. Nor is there any difference between those and any of the colored eggs from chickens who carry a color gene from an ancestor cross bred with a true ameriaucana.

2. You cannot tell the difference between a fertiled egg and an unfertilized egg. People who say the little white string in an egg is rooster sperm is an idiot.That is the chalaza and it is what attaches to the membrane at the shell to keep the egg yolk centered in the egg.

3. If you did have a fertiled egg the only way to tell is to look VERY carefully at the yolf after a few days and look for a tiny speck called a bullseye where the cells are beginning to form.

4. You can eat fertilized and unfertilized eggs and NEVER know the difference. There is really no difference. You won't be eating a baby chick if you eat a fertilized egg.

5. Fertilized eggs can sit for as long as 10 days or so before the hen has enough to sit on if she goes broody. They do not begin to develop into what will become a chick until they have started the incubating process. It takes lots of continuous warmth provided by a nice fluffy feathered hen or a monitored incubator to begin the process toward a hatching chick.

6. Never count your chicks before the eggs hatch.

I wrote all of this to tell you this story.

Last night I was finishing up with cooking supper (chicken stew from one of our own processed chickens!) so Steve and Colby and Gracie went out to the barn to check the feed and close up. The girls came in first.

Gracie says, "Can I show momma what we found?" 

Colby says, "No, not yet." I said, "If my chickens laid an egg and you all didn't come get me my feelings will be hurt." Not really but maybe? LOL

Steve comes in and the conversation is repeated with him only this time Gracie holds out her hands and in each hand is a little pullet egg.

So I have no idea which two started laying yesterday but I do have an idea since they were found in the nest boxes closest to the door that it was most likely one if my RIR and one of the barred rocks.

You know threatening them is what I think did it. I went out there yesterday morning and said to them all as I filled the feeders, " I took 3 boys out here for being lazy and mean do you girls want to be next? If not, you better get to producing some eggs!"

The photo is two small pullet eggs. They are very light brown. They may or may not have a yolk in them. I'll find out later when I crack them to cook.

How cool is that?

My chickens make me breakfast!

First of all you may be wondering what the heck is a crabapple. A crabapple is a wild or cultivated variety of tree that are relatives of apple trees but produce a small sour fruit.

The blossoms on the trees look like normal apples blossoms and they come in various shades of white and pink. I am partial to the pink flowering trees.

Up here in Virginia the crabapple trees are different from the crabapples trees I had in Georgia. My old crabapple tree (still standing today) was about 40 years old (maybe older when I was a kid) and is at least 80 years old now. It produces a white flower and looks like a wonderful snowball tree in spring when it is all in bloom. The fruit from this tree was yellowish skinned with white flesh and being about the size and shape of a golf ball. The bees and wasps and yellow jackets loved that tree in the late summer and fall. As a kid would pick the fruits and nibble at them. My mother would fuss and tell us we would get a 'belly ache' but we never did. She never made us jelly from those crab apples either. One year before we moved from the old house I did make a very small batch of jelly and it was devine.

The crabapples trees that are popular here in Virginia give a very small fruit. About the size of a cherry, in some cases smaller. People plant the trees for their lovely blossoms and shade but often turn up their noses at the fruit as if they can't be bothered with the lowly sour apple cousins. I have three crabapples. Two of them flank my path to the koi pond and one is deeply root on the far side of the pond. The two standing century produce a yellowish fruit and they ripen and soften quickly in spring and fall off. The other tree blooms in lovely pink flowers that soon give way to deep pink fruits that hang in clusters very much like cherries. They are ripening now on my tree and the color is gorgeous.

So what does Martha have to do with crabapples? Martha has something to do with everything it seems but this one is in particular a funny story. If you remember when Martha was a guest of the penal system in West Virginia she got in trouble for harvesting and making crabapple jelly for the other inmates. I think the warden was an ass about the whole thing and Martha was ever Martha by taking sour old crabapples and turning them into sweet jelly. You know that old line "When life hands you lemons?" try this one instead, "When life hands you crabapples - Make jelly." Martha did.

 So how does oe make jelly out of sour old crabapples? (Isn't that a great name for sour fruits? Crabapples!)

Crabapple jelly is very simple to make. Pretty much all jely is easy to make. Jelly is the thickened, sweetened, juice of the fruit. Jam is the thickened, sweetened juice and pulp from fruit. Both are easy and now days can be made nearly fool proof.

First - get yourself some small canning jars with bands and brand spanking new lids. Do NOT try to use old lids! Send the bands and the jars through the dishwasher to wash and dry on a high heat cycle. This sterilizes the jars for you. Don't open the dishwasher until you need the jars. If you do not have a dishwasher hand wash the jars in hot soapy water. Rinse well. Place in a pot of boiling water and let the boil until you need them. In a smaller pot of simmering water place the new lids that you have washed in it and leave them until you need them.

Second - Pick your crabapples. Wash them well, removing all stems and inspecting for damaged fruit. Place them in a stock pot and add just enough water to barely cover the top. Bring to a boil and simmer the fruits until soft.

For jelly - strain off the juice using a colander. Then strain that juice through muslin or cheesecloth to get the pure pulp free liquid. For every cup of liquid add 1 cup of sugar. Then add 1 extra cup of sugar -just in case. Put the mixture back into a clean pot making sure all of the sugar is dissolved before it comes to a boil. Boil for about 2 minutes. Stirring well add one box of pectin (Sure Jel is the brand I use). Continue stirring for about 2 minutes and remove from heat. If any foam has formed on the top spoon this off.

 For jam - strain off the juice using a colander. You will have juice and some pulp particles. For every cup of liquid and pulp add 1 cup of sugar. Then add 1 extra cup of sugar - just in case. Put the mixture back into a clean pot making sure all of the sugar is dissolved before it comes to a boil. Boil for about 2 minutes. Stirring well add one box of pectin (Sure Jel is the brand I use). Continue stirring for about 2 minutes and remove from heat. If any foam or scum has formed on the top spoon this off.

Third remove your jars from the dishwasher or your pot of boiling water. Make sure your hands are clean and do not grab the jars by the lip or let your fingers touch the inside. You want to them as sterile as possible.

Pour the jelly/jam into the jars leaving about one quarter inch of space  at the top of the jar. If the lip of the jar has any jelly/jam dripped on it use a clean hot cloth to wipe it clean.

Take one of your lids from the simmering water and place it on the jar making sure you do not handle the inner side. Remember clean clean clean is the key to good canning.

Place a band ring on the jar and screw it down tight.

I have seen many people take a jar and place it upside down and when it cools they turn the jars over and check for sealing.

PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS!

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

Not all things will seal properly. Even though the sugar content is high you could poison yourself or your family! If you can this way you are very lucky to have never gotten sick.

To properly can jelly/jam from sugared fruit:

In a large pot of boiling water place the jars right side up making sure there is about 2 inches of water over the tops of the jars. Boil for 15 minutes.

Remove jars. Place them on a clean towel on the counter top or table and allow them to cool naturally. You will hear the pop of the lids as they vacuum seal themselves.

Once the jars are completely cooled check to be sure each one is sealed. You can hold it up and look across the lid and see a small dimple. You can feel the slight dent in the lid.

If you do not see or feel the jar lid dimple it probably is not sealed properly. The lid is faulty and needs to be replaced. Remove the band and old lid. Heat a new lid. Make sure the lip of the jar is clean. Apply a new lid. Screw on the band tightly and process in boiling water again.

 Put your jelly/jam on a shelf and leave it sit for a few weeks. This aging lets the flavor develop. When I can in the summer I make the kids wait until late fall when the weather is cold before opening jelly/jam/preserves.

This process I have described above is often refered to as water bath canning. It is done only to very high acidic food stocks. It is used mostly for jam, jelly, preserves, marmaladies, etc - things with a very high sugar content because nothing can live and grow in that kind of environment. It is also used for things that are pickled. Nothing lives in vinegar very well either. Not everything can be canned in this manner.

NEVER TRY TO CAN GARLIC OR MEATS IN THIS MANNER.

Garlic, meats, and most vegetables must be canned using a pressure canner. It is the only way to be sure germs are killed inside the jar. A simple water bath process will not do the job. This is how people poison their families.

I don't want to put a damper on anyone's jelly/jam making. The process is easy and not dangerous at all. But I don't want anyone to think that this method can be used for anything and everything and something horrid happen simply because a novice did not know.

Go out and buy yourself the Ball Blue Book for canning. It has tons of recipes and the processes for canning almost any kind of food you can imagine.

If your budget is short or you are very frugal call your local extension office (you know, the people who sponsor 4H for kids). They have tons of information printed that you can have for free. They are being paid with your hard earned tax dollars so put them to work for you.

If you happen to run across an old pressure canner at a yard sale or estate sale. Grab it up and take it home. You just saved yourself about two hundred dollars. The county extension office also is able to test the pressure on your canner and set it properly for you. Or point you in the direction of purchasing a new seal or pressure gage. I love my pressure cooker and canner. I use them all the time.

Happy canning!

Anne from Cooking with Anne did a post on her pantry staples. Those things she wouldn't be without. Some of you might even remember the post I did on keeping my pantry stocked. I think I may have Bettina's syndrome and her idea of an emergency shelf. Any way - Anne's list is a great list. I keep most of those things on hand also. You never know when you might have last minute guests or need to make the budget stretch for another few days or a week. Here you can find my standard pantry and cupboard items that I pretty much have on hand all of the time. Open my cabinets and plunder around and you'll find all sorts of things. My make-do and make-it-last list is different. Part of me is the ingrained be preparedness of growing up with a grandmother who canned and prepared a lot of summer produce. The other part of me thinks about FEMA's emergency preparedness recommendations and takes heed. I probably wouldn't go to as great a lengths if I still lived in Georgia but with us living so close to D.C. and seeing how grocery stores empty out in bad weather I can imagine if we went into a state of emergency there would be NOTHING to be had in the stores around here. We live in the rural country side. We figure if something major happened the cities would most likely evacuate to us. We base this on the fact there is an underground shelter a few miles away that is intended to house important members of Congress and supposedly the Vice President. There may seem like a lot on my list but there are six of us here much of the time. FEMA recommends that we be ready with an emergency food and water supply just in case a disaster should occur. (Do you know you need to store 1 gallon of drinking water per person per day? For us we would need to store at least 18 gallons of potable water. That is alot of water. Nursing mothers, babies, elderly and sick people need to consume more. Plus water for other needs.) Here are things I try to keep on my shelves -just in case. I do rotate out flour, meals and the like so that it is not more than a month old. When I empty a bag I use the reserve bag then replish that with a new bag. Baking Goods -Flour -baking soda -baking powder -powdered milk/buttermilk -Crisco and/or Lard -Vanilla Extract (real vanilla, my mother brings it back when she goes on her fall cruise to the Bahamas or I buy it at Costco for a fair price in a large bottle) -Yeast (one of the small 3 pack strips) With these items I can make, biscuits, pancakes, waffles, muffins or any number of quick breads that do not require yeast. Pancakes and waffles are excellent for both breakfast and supper. My kids find it a real treat especially during the cold weather months to have pancakes for supper. They also are huge fans of cornbread. Can Goods (at least 2 - 4 cans each) -Green Beans -Whole Kernel Corn -Tomatoes -Light and Dark Kidney Beans -black beans -Pintos -Turnips -Carrots -Peas (Sauers only!) -Tuna -Chicken -Peaches -Pineapple -Cranberry -Fruit Cocktail Jarred Goods -Spaghetti Sauce -Jarred Salsa - (there is a lime and garlic and a black bean and white corn salsa that is Walmart brand that is great to pour over chicken and bake or to add to rice and serve as a mexican style rice, or layer with hamburger, tortillas and cheese for a casserole. Condiments -Mayonnaise -Ketchup -Yellow Mustard -Specialty Mustards -Soy Sauce -Worcestershire Sauce (with ketchup, mustard, worcestershire and spices I can make BBQ sauce, tomato gravy, etc.) You never know when a can of vegetables will come in handy. Either to stretch a meal or to add to a soup or stew to make it go just a little bit farther. I have a selection of other things we like on hand at most times as well. Soups and crackers and other things the kids like both canned and dried. Gracie is a big fan of romein soup. She has been known to survive a week or more on that stuff for supper every night. Not that I don't cook. There are days when I know she won't touch anything I have cooked because she doesn't like it. I also keep the canned beans because they do not need hours to cook like the dried ones do. Dry Goods Beans and Peas (dried limas, yellow and green split pea, black beans, kidney beans, black eyed peas, white beans, navybeans, pintos, etc.) Rice (risotto, basmati, jasmine, japanese rice for sushi, etc.) Cornmeal (yellow and white) Pasta (several varieties) CousCous Barley Grits (in the winter my kids want grits every morning, especially Gracie) This includes things that are prepackaged like a quick mac and cheese, dirty rice, spanish rice, red beans and rice, yellow rice, etc. Things that will not go bad even if they sit on the shelf six months or more. They also require no special storage just a closed dry place. Many things I buy when I have a good coupon or the store has a buy one get one sale like pickles, olives, sauces, carnation milk, eagle brand condensed milk etc. I can't even list everything out there on those shelves. I do keep check of things and rotate them out before dates expire. A supply of seasonings -Mrs. Dash -Pepper -Salt -Garlic Powder -Chilli Powder -Onion Powder -Cinnamon I have a stockpile of tiny little jars and bottles of spices. I am sure alot of us do. Buying even the tiniest of spices available for just one recipe we are left with a nearly full jar of something we don't use often. You name it I probably have it. This list above was just the basics. With onion and garlic powder it makes up for not having fresh onion and garlic to season things with. Chilli powder is a quick kick-em-up. I also keep a jar of local honey, air tight pouches of tea bags, and an extra small can of coffee. I buy peanut oil for the fryer in the 2 gallon container. Peanut oil keeps well, it has a very high burn temp and things will cook without being greasey. A 5lb bag of sugar will last us almost a year. I use it for baking for the holidays and for birthday cakes. Sometimes I may need to buy two bags depending on how heavy my baking will be especially at Christmas. If we were to lose power for a couple days or longer I have the wood stove we can cook on. During the cold months when I burn the stove daily I practice and challenge myself to see what I can cook, what I can learn to cook and how to regulate the heat to cook all sorts of things. The kids laugh at me and make fun but they always gobble up whatever it is I have prepared. Especially pancakes and sausage. (see previous post). I also have a couple gallons of fresh water. I probably should think about setting in a few more -just in case. 6 people for 3 days is 18 gallons of water. That is so much water! I also keep my tank filled on my truck. I encourage Colby not to let her tank get below half full. I keep the tractor and cans filled with diesel as well. I keep first aid boxes upstairs and down also in our car and trucks. We also have a medicine cabinet and drawer in the bathroom filled with all sorts of things. When I buy over the counter medicines for the kids I usually buy the Walmart brand where you get two bottles for less than one of the name brand. We have plenty of bandaids and the like. I also keep a bottle of alcohol and peroxide. I have witch hazel as well. Back in Georgia I kept it in the fridge. Here I don't. I don't know why. Perhaps too many hands going in and out of my fridge all of the time. If we had to I know we could do fine for a good while without feeling like we are doing without because I also have a deep freezer I keep stocked with premade meals, extra meats bought on sale, etc. If I needed to preserve things in my freezer I do have a supply of jars and a large pressure canner. I have a small supply of pickling lime, pickling salt, vinegar and whatnot on hand most of the time as well. For his big Christmas gift Steve's parents gave him a large generator. If we had to use it we could power our refrigerator and/or freezer for a while until we could eat what was stored in there. A few years ago Steve picked up one of those radios that you wind up and it generates its own electricity to run on for two or three hours at a time. We also tend to have extra batteries due to the kids having several items that require batteries. We have not set out to be prepared for a disaster. A disaster is the last thing on my mind. But I do think about it sometimes. You know, just in case. We seem to be pretty well set on the home front if we had to be. We also have a few spirits on hand. You know, the kind used for snake bites. (Hahaha!) How about you? Do you keep a standard stock of staples for your family? Do you keep a emergency supply in your pantry?

I did! What I had planned to do before my mother came at Christmas has been done in this past month. I painted the baseboards and the window frames in my kitchen. Finally! Sometimes I cook on the woodstove. Why waste electricity?
Look at those pretty white baseboards! Not only did I do the painting but I have managed to also complete one set of curtains for my windows. See the unpainted things that never got painted at Christmas?
Looky there! Curtains! These curtains are a project I have worried over for almost two years. Yes, two entire years. I flipped flopped on the curtain/no curtain issue many times not wanting to put up a curtain that would close in the room and block out the wonderful sunlight this room gets all day long. I purchased this fabric online a month or two after we moved into this house. It was always earmarked for curtains. Either in my kitchen or my bedroom. The kitchen won. It is a great toile print of a barnyard scene with an old red bard and rooster. Although I had ordered 10 yards of the fabric there was not enough for two windows of this size and the smaller window at the end of the kitchen. Nice. Because this print is out of stock. It is a two year old print that has long been gone. I have wanted in some way to have gingham in the kitchen but I didn't want to go overboard and look like a barn dance in here. So I thought about it alot. I looked through thousands of patterns for curtains and draperies. It wasn't until recently that I was inspired by a designer kitchen advertisement to make the curtains you now see. Not too much gingham. The perfect matching crimson. Nice fabric for draperies. The first set I made I lined them. The lining blocked out too much of the sunlight. I do not want this kitchen to be dim. I like it flooded in natural sunlight. So I ripped out the lining and remade the curtains without it. I like the look of the yellow walls, red accents and white trim in this room. The appliances are stainless steel with black trim. I have begun to add black and cast iron things to the room to flesh it out. The heavy black cast iron is a great contrast to the more feminine white ceramic pieces and china in the room. I never planned to paint those cabinets white. It was sort of a last chance to have a nice looking kitchen without the expense of new cabinets. These are just too good of shape to toss for the sake of cosmetic wants. I never planned to paint the walls yellow. I never had a color in mind but yellow just wasn't one of my choices. One day I saw a yellow cloth given as a gift in something when Steven was born. My brain said paint the kitchen that color. And so we did. Last July. The black granite of the countertops was simply what was available without a special order. The price was right. The white cabinets and black countertops deemed the black hardware the wiser choice. I chose them online based solely on price. I think they work. With the brick red floors I already had a lot of red accents. The rugs and towels, the wall plates, the roosters and painted sign. As things began to come together I realized the little sofa was red with yellow(ish) and black plaid stripes. It just works without any conscious effort on my part. Eveything is really beginning to come together after alot of hard work. I am really beginning to see and feel the room as a part of the house and not as an addition without much thought to the rest of the house. This has been a long time in coming. I started painting the cabinets (3 coats of primer 2 coats of paint) and continued on when Steven was just a newborn. I have progressed over the past year slowly. Very slow. My infant grew into a giggly baby and then into a busy toddler and now a non-stop very active little boy. Meaning it took me this long because instead of painting from the bottom up I painted from the top down. Little people under three feet tall do not listen to you when you tell them not to touch the wet paint on the baseboards. I suppose you already knew that. I should have. Speaking of which ... Steven, 14 months old His smile pretty much says it all.

Dry Goods King Author Unbleached Flour Martha White Self Rising Flour White Cornmeal Yellow Cornmeal Jiffy Cornbread Mix Fish Fry Hushpuppy Mix Baking Soda Baking Powder Cream of Tartar Yeast Cornstarch Cocoa Powder Granulated Sugar Confectioners Sugar Brown Sugar Equal Sweet and Low Splenda Grits Oatmeal (instant) Oatmeal (quick cooking oats) Cereal (breakfast cereals of two or more varieties) White Rice Brown Rice Risotto Japanese Rice (for sushi) Basmati Rice Jasmine Rice Pasta (thin spaghetti, fettaccini, elbows, lasagne, rotini, abc's, etc) Couscous Potato buds Macaroni and Cheese Seasoned Rice Mixes Ramein Soup Gelatine (unflavored) Jello Pudding Marshmallows (large and mini and the new strawberry flavor) Raisens Golden Raisens Craisens Pecans Walnuts Chocolate Chips Dried Cherries Graham crackers Saltines Oyster Crackers Cheese crackers Popcorn Hot chocolate mix Koolaide type mixes Lemonaide Chrystal Light drink mixes Bottled Water Canned Goods Green beans Turnips Carrots Tomatoes Tomato Paste Tomato Sauce Kidney Beans (light and dark) Corn (whole and creamed) Black Beans Pintos Canned fruit Pineapple Peaches Fruit Cocktail Cranberry Tuna Chicken Dried Beef Hotdog Chili Bushes Chili Bushes Beans Jam, Jelly and Preserves I made Pickles (Kosher Dill, sweet, bread and butter) Olives (green and black) Peppers Spaghetti Sauce Salsa Cream of Mushroom Soup Cream of Chicken Soup Golden Cream of Mushroom Chicken Bouillon Peanut butter Nutella Light Corn Syrup Dark Corn Syrup Cane Syrup (I do not like maple syrup) Various Salad Dressing Catalina Blue Cheese Italian Ranch Vidalia Onion Poppyseed Balsamic Vinegar White Vinegar Cider Vinegar Olive oil Sesame oil Canola Oil Peanut Oil Lard Crisco Shortening Nonstick Spray Baking Spray Worcestershire Soy Sauce Ketchup Yellow Mustard Brown Mustard Other Mustards Mayonnaise Hot sauce Honey Vanilla Sweetened Condensed Milk Evaporated Milk Herbs and Spices Iodized Salt Kosher Salt Sea Salt Pepper Peppercorns Garlic Powder Onion Powder Capers Allspice Pumpkin Pie Spice Ground cloves Whole Cloves Apple Pie Spice Whole Nutmeg Cinnamon Cinnamon Sticks Cumin Dill Marjoram Bay leaves Thyme Basil Oregano Parsley Poppyseed Cayenne pepper Chili powder Paprika (from Hungary, my in-laws brought it back for me) Ginger Dry Mustard Mace Saffron Meat Tenderizer Old Bay Mrs Dash Italian Seasoning Curry Powder Cajun Seasoning Lemon Juice Coffee Tea (many varieties, herbal, black, orange pekote, earl grey, irish breakfast, lady grey, green, etc) Fresh Produce Potatoes Onions Garlic Carrots Celery Tomatoes Cucumber Lettuces Spinach Refrigerator Eggs Milk Cheese Yogurt Sour Cream Butter Margerine Freezer Wide variety of frozen vegetables (broccoli, squash, pumpkin, butterbeans, etc) Breads (rolls, sandwish, specialty, etc) Meats Poultry Fish Hotdogs Sausage Bacon Fish Sticks Hamburger Roasts Loins Ham Ice cream Popcycles I am sure there are tons of things I have left off this list.