Good growing season makes saving that garden goodness a wise decision July 30, 2000 By JIM BROOKS All that work researching my garden and planting seeds and plants earlier this year has been paying off with such a bountiful harvest this summer. With the addition of a new freezer, we've been freezing most of our garden produce, including sugar snap peas and green beans. We've canned dozens of quarts of cucumbers, and christened our tomato patch by fixing a plate of tasty fried green tomatoes. If you're enjoying the fruits of your garden this year too, you may wish to check out the National Food Safety Database for some new recipes for freezing and canning your harvest. There are only so many quarts of sweet pickles you can put up before you get tired of them, but the database has some interesting twists on some old favorites. With a large number of tomatoes plumping up on the vines, we'll probably can and freeze quite a few of ripe and some green tomatoes, thanks to the database of information. Even homemade tomato juice -- a family favorite -- can be frozen, saving the time, energy (and heat in the kitchen) that canning requires. Once you visit the Food Safety Database, you'll have to click on the "Consumer" news link to reach a large menu of selections. The one you'll need is the one titled "Canning, Drying and Freezing." Point your Web browser to www.foodsafety.ufl.edu for details. MORE RECIPES. For some additional variety in your canning and freezing, you might want to surf to the Michigan State University Extension service Web site at www.msue.msu.edu/msue/ You'll have to scroll down the page, but there's a text link to the "Preserving Food Safely" section of the Web site that will interest anyone trying to freeze or can this summer. With a bumper crop of tomatoes on ripening on the vine, and one columnist and two kids who love tomato ketchup, a recipe for "Blender Ketchup" looks like a good way to put some of our excess tomatoes to good use. PRESTO! And speaking of canning, chances are if you're going to use a pressure cooker, you will use or borrow one of the many models manufactured by Presto. The company's Web site is a handy resource for spare parts for nearly every pressure cooker the company has manufactured. Not having grown up with one in use in my childhood home, I'll admit that I always considered a pressure cooker something along the lines of a bomb ready to explode at a moment's notice. Thankfully, between my wife and my mother-in-law, I've come to see what a real benefit pressure cookers are, both for home canning and for everyday cooking. You can read about the company's history, but more importantly, if you own one of their canners, locate spare parts, gauges, books and more. While I may tease my wife about the explosive nature of pressure cookers and canners, the fact remains that they do require proper care for safe operation. For information on that old Presto canner or cooker, visit the web site at www.presto-net.com. NAPSTER LIVES! After a near-death experience in court, Napster will continue operation for at least the immediate future, until the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals can hear the case. A U.S. District judge ruled in favor of the Recording Industry Association of America, which is claiming that Napster facilitates copyright infringement by its very nature. Napster's defense -- a rather naive "who, us? Copyright infringement?" -- didn't hold water in court. Neither did the fact that studies indicate that Napster users buy more CDs than non-Napster users. The judge ruled that Napster can't set up a service that allows the free exchange of copyrighted material and then claim ignorance that infringement is taking place -- even if the files never pass through Napster's computers. The judge's thinking is hard to argue with. Ignorance of the law -- or in this case, turning your head to it -- is no excuse. That's why the 9th Circuit ruled in favor of the recording industry. Napster's attorneys successfully pointed out to the appellate judges that this is new territory we're treading -- applying existing copyright law to some really new situation, thanks to the Internet. In the big picture, Napster's method of distributing music is a significant threat to the recording industry. Imagine a world where you need only download your music and burn your own CD (or download to your own digital player). Even if you pay a licensing fee or royalties, it's clear what's missing -- the recording companies. There's no justification for $15 CDs when you are selling individual songs. And the whole manufacturing and distribution system -- controlled by record companies -- is a source of revenue that could shrink dramatically. The recording industry will likely prevail against Napster, but that won't stop folks from downloading and sharing music via the Web. The recording industry will have to eventually face file sharing again -- soon. NAPSTER FALLOUT. Faced with the potential loss of Napster, its 21 million users have been logging in and downloading at a rate that has been overwhelming. My attempts to log in to the Napster Web site were unsuccessful the day after the judge ruled that Napster's Web site would have to close. Clearly there was a mad dash to download before the shutdown took effect. File-sharing sites similar to Napster saw a huge increase in users after the ruling too. Huge surges in web traffic shut down file sharing sites Scour and Gnutella as users looked to find other ways to download and share files. For now, Napster's court troubles are being held at bay. For the latest information, you can read it at Napster when you log in at www.napster.com. OUT OF THIS WORLD SITE. As a boy of 5, I remember watching the news coverage of NASA's then "next-generation" Gemini spacecraft. The spacecraft was christened the Molly Brown; the mission was Gemini III, which featured Virgil "Gus" Grissom and John W. Young. It was the first manned flight of the Gemini, and was a successful debut of the first of 10 manned flights. A lot of technology has changed since that summer 35 years ago. The latest space development is the recent docking of the Russian Zvezda module with the International Space Station (ISS) now in orbit around the earth. The station will later this year house its first permanent visitors, a crew of three -- one U.S. astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts. For the latest space-related news, there's no better place to go than Space.com. The home page always has the latest news from around the globe related to space exploration. The menu has a neat "drop-down" feature so you can go to specific news areas. In my case, I selected "Space Stations" to learn more about the latest on the ISS. There's a lot of information on other related programs, cool stuff for kids, photos and more. For the latest in space-related news, point your browser to www.space.com. Comments and questions about this column may be sent to jbrooks@myoldkentuckyhome.com, or visit www.myoldkentuckyhome.com on the World Wide Web. | HOME |