Well, the housemate has started her Holiday baking cycle, so she pulled out another two gallon bags of black raspberries from this summer's crop from the freezer to 'make room'. Which meant I had to process them into jam... But she got out of the (darn small) kitchen so late that I'd be up late into the night if I'd gone for the 3-4 batches of jam those would make. So I decided it was time to finally fire up the food mill.

I got an 'original, all-metal Squeezo strainer' (Made in the USA) with the additional screens, including the berry screen, as a Christmas gift last year from the housemate's parents, and had yet to use it til tonight.

Setup was really simple, it clamped nicely onto our dining room table, and all I needed to do was rinse the parts off, put it together, put a large bowl under the end spout to catch the discarded 'mash', and a container under the drain pan to catch that lovely antioxidant-rich juice. Oh yeah, and crank the handle a lot Once done, it cleaned up quickly and easily.

The two gallon bags of berries ended up making right about 64 ounces of black raspberry juice, and a couple of large bowlsful of seeds and mash to put out for the birds in under half an hour. The food mill worked wonderfully, the juice went into the fridge for tonight, and I'll work on making jelly instead of jam either tomorrow or the next day, rather than spending the next six hours or so making multiple batches of jam. If I can find a mold at the craft store, I'm thinking of trying my hands at making jel sticks that I can then dip in dark chocolate. I've bought orange and red raspberry ones before, and I think making my own would be fun.

So it's two thumbs up for the 'All-metal Squeezo strainer' food mill. I just wish we'd had an apple crop on the trees this year so I could have done apple butter and apple sauce as well.

Just this morning saw an ad from Pete, about how 'Now that the elections are over, it's time to' work on reducing the national debt, ie, it's *AUSTERITY* time again! Slash social programs, slash the safety net, let grandma die, all in the name of 'Fixing the Debt'.

Get ready to tighten that belt, folks, if you've even still got a belt to tighten.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/09/1343530/-The-Man-Who-Made-the-Democratic-Party-What-It-Is-Today

Some key excerpts.







The whole thing is worth a read, and I tip my hat to 'Th0rn', who posted it over at Daily Kos.

From gjohnsit at Daily Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/06/1342721/-The-Real-Story-of-the-2014-Election-Who-Lost



There are links in there I didn't cut and paste back into the excerpt, but one deserves the link in particular - Blue Dog ranks to shrink in new Congress from The Hill.

Both articles are both reading in whole, but to 'pre-but' the usual reply, one more cut from gjohnsit's story, in a rebuttal of his own



That pretty much says it all. Even in Conservative districts, running candidates who don't want to be proudly Dems is a losing battle, unless they can coattail in on a wildly popular Presidential candidate. But even then, when they come up for re-election without a President on the ticket, we just lose the seat again.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/05/1341978/-Democrats-Have-Their-Schlitz-Beer-Reckoning



Learn from this debacle, or repeat it.

Got my garlic in the ground last week, and bought a hay bale this weekend to spread over it, in hopes of not losing over half of next year's crop to a brutal winter like I did this year's crop.

I also bought cotton seeds to plant in the spring. I read somewhere a description of how it's actually one of the lousiest crops ever to try and harvest, both on height of plant and the jagged sharp pod edges that slice up your hands as you try to get the cotton out. It suggested that everyone should try picking some at least once, to get a visceral appreciation for even that particular sucky part of slavery in the US. I'll give it a shot, even though I actually decided to try growing it to provide winter nesting fibers for the birds and squirrels. Since I'm not after the cotton to use myself and just leaving it for the birds, I went with the more ornamental 'black beauty' cotton, which has a purplish-black foliage as opposed to one of the 'extra long strand' varieties.

Also did some weeding in the strawberries, although I need to do a lot more still.