When I started reading Flanagan’s article, my first thought was what a curmudgeon, but then I read the most important bit of information: She has school age children in California schools. When we lived in Silicon Valley in the early ‘80s, the woman who rented us our apartment asked us, after the deal was done, whether we had school age children. When we said no, she told us that was good since the schools (in Cupertino, home of Apple!) were so bad. Prop 13 killed them. We found the Valley to be a strange combination of brilliant engineers (mostly from elsewhere) and the incompetent. No clerks could make change. Banks didn’t realize they were obliged to cash good checks written against their accounts even if you didn’t have an account. And so on. Perhaps we should listen and research if these gardens have the educational merit to deserve the money and time.

I also use a Silpat to line a roasting pan when I’m using it as a baine marie particularly when making individual custards. It keeps them from slipping. This quality also makes it useful when canning - I put one in a half sheet pan and use it to carry jars back and forth to the canner.

Oh, and the best pumpkin thing I made last year was a pumpkin cheesecake. No recipe - I just winged it using a 1 lb. container of quark cheese (sort of like farmer’s cheese or drained ricotta), pumpkin from a small sugar pie pumpkin, 3-4 eggs. Processed it all then added good milled, not refined, sugar and spices to taste. Very yummy.

The pumpkin had a very hard shell, so I put it whole on a parchment covered sheet pan and cooked it till soft. Much safer than trying to cut it in half.

Canning Across America needs a theme song! As far as I’m concerned, the only candidate is “Canned Goods” by Greg Brown. For lyrics goto: http://www.gregbrown.org/gbonent1.html#cannedg