PermieWriter’s Recent Comments

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  Gravensteins are the tastiest! They have the heirloom hatrick: great taste, short season and poor shippability. But they make wonderful pies, applesauce, crisps, baked apples, etc. And wonderful fresh eating. I'm pretty sure they have to be grafted, though.On Apples with a sense of place posted 3 weeks, 6 days ago 10 Responses

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  Alas, staying out of new cars does not completely protect one from the new car smell. When BART puts new cars into the system, they positively stink of outgassing nastiness. Just one more reason I carry a carbon-filter face mask around with me. Sure, everyone thinks I'm trying to avoid swine flu (until I explain that virii would have no problem getting through any such mask), but it saves me from inhaling VOCs, nasty perfumes (WTF, people pay to smell like rancid cleaning chemicals?), the occasional nastily belching diesel vehicle and smoke from inconsiderate smokers.On Ask Umbra on that new-car smell posted 1 month, 1 week ago 3 Responses

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  On the infrequent occasion that I use corn utensils, I break them up some and put them in the municipal composting stream - at least in the two counties where I live and work. Most municipalities, at least in California, run very large, hot compost piles. I certainly haven't had any success composting the things at home. Too bad Whole Foods uses them so extensively.

  On Ask Umbra on corn plastic posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago 19 Responses

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  I don't understand why Santa Cruz's is so horrid - the rest of their sodas are pretty tasty. I once stopped off at a brewery in Ukiah with a powerful root beer float jones. Since they make their own ice cream, I thought it was a safe bet. Nope, the wonderful ice cream was ruined by SC's lame root beer. What a waste!

  My best regional rb was Powerhouse's in Sebastopol, but since they had the indecency to go out of business (particularly horrid since they were right across the street from Screamin' Mimi's, and a float made with Mimi's vanilla and Powerhouse rb is a magical combination, indeed). Since then I've been drinking Weinhard's, which has no eco-claims and contains HFCS. But at least it comes in glass bottles. Root beer from cans is just wrong.

  On A tasting of nine "natural" root beers yields surprising results posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago 12 Responses

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  I use wide-mouth pint jars, since it's kind of hard to extract tomatoes from the quart jars, particularly when the olive oil is congealed around them. These (second method) keep for at least a year in the freezer (I've never hung onto them for longer than that). This works very well with plum tomatoes, particularly the small, black ones.

  For the most garlic-ness, I recommend smashing the unpeeled cloves, letting them sit for about five minutes, then peeling and roughly chunking them. Depending on how hard you smashed them (I like using a full Kleen Kanteen), you might not need to cut them at all.

  I'm so envious of your tomatoes. These cool, moist days we've been having in the East Bay are keeping all our tomatoes at a standstill. But I just had my first basket of decent sungolds from the market. Come on, sun!

  On Reveling in the season's tomato bounty, from pasta sauce to easy preserving posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago 16 Responses