Pumpkin Pie the Easy Way

I love pumpkin pie, especially for breakfast. My all time favorite pie is pecan, but pumpkin is so versatile. It's never too heavy and it has the added advantage of all that beta carotene so its good for you! Honest!

Now that the McDonalds Monopoly game is over (and I didn't win again this year), I have to loose the ten pounds I gained as a result of eating McDonalds nine times during the month of October. I only eat McDonalds during Monopoly game time and I was very disappointed that the menu items that qualified to get game pieces were some of the worst they have!  Big Mac, large fries, 10 piece Chicken McNuggets, Fillet of Fish sandwich and the Egg McMuffin were the choices -  not the salads or the chicken wraps or anything that you could possibly consider healthy. And these were the foods that, along with a diet Coke, trigger my out of control appetite causing me to eat more all through the day and into the night! It was like being addicted to something. Truly. I didn't feel like I had control of my eating the whole month. Enough being a cry baby. Time to get back on track!

So, this is the time I make pumpkin pie with out the crust. It's so easy. Pumpkin pie filling is really just a traditional egg and milk custard. So I mix up my favorite pumpkin pie recipe, pour it into custard cups and bake it in a water bath in the oven. Voila!  I have a half dozen  or more super little desserts or quick breakfasts and avoid all the guilt of the fat laden pie crust.

The key to good pumpkin pie is good pumpkin. When I am feeling very ambitious or just want to hang out in the kitchen I cook my own pumpkin. But mostly I use a can of Libby's 100% pumpkin - not the pumpkin pie mix. The recipe on the back of the can makes a good pumpkin pie but I like to substitute brown sugar for the white sugar and I'm careful of the spices. Here's my favorite recipe.

Pumpkin Pie Custard (filling)

A 15oz can of Libby's pumpkin or 1 1/2 cups of fresh processed pumpkin

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

a little grating of nutmeg (optional)

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs lightly beaten (at room temperature if possible)

1 1/2 cups of 2% milk or a 12oz can of fat free evaporated milk

In a bowl of a stand mixer or with a hand mixer beat the eggs lightly and add the brown sugar. Mix. Add the pumpkin and the milk and mix, then add all the spices and salt and mix well. You can just throw all the ingredients in a mixer bowl and mix the whole thing together at once but I like to make sure the eggs are well blended with the sugar and the pumpkin and the spices are evenly mixed through out. Pour the mixture in to custard cups and bake in a water bath (put cups in a baking dish and take to the oven, then pour boiling water half way up the pan). This makes seven 1/2 cup custard cups for me. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center of one of the cups comes out clean. Cool and refrigerate. Now you have a low fat healthy dessert or breakfast or bed time snack. To dress it up for dessert and totally kill the low cal version, bake some pecan halves on the top. When ready to serve drizzle with carmel sauce then top with real whipped cream. But if you just eat it plain its very good and you can enjoy this treat knowing you are doing your body good!



Pet Cemetery Increases

Living in the country with wild animals my pets and domestic livestock are constantly at risk from wild animal born diseases. A case in point is the death of one of the stray cats that visit my place.  I lost the mama kitty yesterday who had given me a litter of kittens last spring. She was a little wild stray who showed up last winter to eat with my back porch (supposed to be barn) cats. She stayed around to have a litter of kittens last spring and another this fall. Yesterday morning when I went out to feed the steer and the chickens I found her lying in the driveway, alive but unable to move. I picked her up and laid her on the deck of the bush hog (I had the tractor with me), but she was scared and crying pitifully, so I put her on the grass and went to the house for a card box lined with a blanket that one of the other cats used as a bed sometimes.  I gently laid her in the box and brought her into the house. I expected her to die any minute. There was no blood and she was almost a 1/4 of a mile from the road, so I didn't think she'd been hit by a car.  I remembered the night before when she came to the porch for supper how big her belly was - like she was pregnant again and ready to give birth. Poison, I thought, or maybe kicked by a cow and internal damage.

I showered and dressed for work as usual but stopped at Lebanon Animal Hospital on the way into town to have Dr. Mead take a look at her. I was pretty sure she wasn't going to recover and I signed papers to have her put to sleep. I left the information about the swelled belly and asked that Dr. Mead take a look at her before they put her down as I really wanted to know what was wrong with her.

Dr. Mead called later in the morning to tell me the kitty had Feline Infectious Peritonitis, an incurable disease caused by a virus. Her swollen belly was full of fluid and she would not recover. I agreed to have her put to sleep and picked up the body after work, burying her next to Walter, my kitty who died this summer of cancer.

She was a feisty little black kitty with huge green eyes and fang like teeth that showed from an undershot jaw line. She was always thin and wylie - and tiny, and I've spent the summer trying to catch her to get her spay (neutered) so she'd stop having kittens!  I was never successful at luring her into any cage or hanging on to her long enough to put her in a cage.

I looked up FIP as the vet called it on the Internet. The disease is caused by a virus and is passed in saliva and feces.  She probably passed the virus to her kittens but their immune systems seem to have over come it because they are very healthy. Most cats over come the virus by the time they are two or three years old. The disease occurs in a cat with a poor immune system or one that has a serious health issue that compromises its immune system. Mama kitty certainly didn't appear robust. She was always small and skinny and fighting everyone for food. I made sure she and the others had plenty to eat, but I guess it wasn't enough. The last litter of kittens was too much for her and she succumbed to the virus.

I plan to have the four spring kittens neutered this weekend. She didn't bring them to me until they were about six weeks old and three of the four are friendly, one is still wild.  Hopefully they will come through with no problems, and my other cats are old enough that they probably are safe.  For the last week or so I'd suspected that the August litter had not survived. I thought she had them among the round bales of hay stored near the barn, but then I'd see her coming each morning from the woods along the driveway. She did not appear to be nursing kittens. I hunted a little in the woods for them yesterday evening, thinking I might hear little kittens mewing but found nothing. So, except for the four boys on the back porch, that is the end of mama kitty.

Bald Cypress Seeds

I collected some bald cypress "cones" from some of the trees at Glendower Historic Mansion. The trees were supposedly given to J. Milton Williams by Henry Clay back in the late 1840's. There are three very large trees still there and this year they had "fruit" or cones as they are called. They are not cone shaped at all, but round balls.  Anyway, a branch had fallen off one of the trees during a storm in August and I was able to gather three cones. 

I thought it might be nice to try to grow some trees from the cones so I checked on line for instructions and sure enough there were a couple of sites giving out growing information. They all pretty much agreed so I hope it works.  First I cracked open the cones with a nut cracker - it was easy. Inside were some funny little bits that I think were the seed, they were flat sided, not round. They had sticky, pine smelling stuff on them. I planted them in layers of dampened peat moss and stashed the whole thing in a plastic box with a tight fitting lid and put the whole thing in the back of the refrigerator. I put the date on the box and a reminder that in 60 days I need to take them out of the refrigerator and plant them in peat pots. Hope I remember.

Sheet Cake vs Cupcake vs Fancy Cupcake

One of the benefits of working in an office is the camaraderie many of us share. In our office we make a point of celebrating each other's birthdays.  Our office has a small staff of four and a large staff of volunteers, most of which work only one day a week. They accomplish a tremendous amount of work in just one day and the staff is always thrilled to discover a volunteer's birthday so we can bring in a cake and celebrate. If its a particularly special birthday (and we have a lot of age 80 or 90 plus birthdays to celebrate) a large number of volunteers stop by just for the celebration.

The staff shares bringing in the cake. One of the staff brings in a really wonderful cake from a bakery in the greater Dayton area. Everyone loves these cakes.  I usually try to bake a cake my self and my dark chocolate sheet cake is the most popular (see the recipe in my March 31st posting).  One time I baked the sheet cake recipe as cupcakes. They were a big hit with everyone who tried them and the recipe made a huge amount of cupcakes and being cupcakes it was easy to share them around.  I took some to work and distributed the rest among my parents and siblings' household. Everyone loved those cupcakes which were just simple dark chocolate with chocolate icing, nothing fancy.

A staff member was recently celebrating her birthday and I promised to bring cupcakes. As too often happens  I ran out of time and skipped across the street to the cupcake cafe and purchased a dozen of their wonderful fancy,  filled cupcakes. You can buy them in three sizes and I can bake an entire sheet cake for what one of their larger ones costs, but they are so good and so special, I just have to have one now and then. 

The surprising thing was that the cupcakes were not as well received as I'd hoped. The men liked them fine, but men generally like any good baked good. The women on the other hand were more picky. Several didn't like the fact that there was raspberry filling in the cupcakes. Others didn't think the cake part of the cupcake was so good. Somehow they had been expecting  my home made cupcakes and just couldn't get past that thought. No one expressed this outright, but it was implied.  The result was I had left over cupcakes. I didn't want to eat them all myself - though I could have, in one sitting, no problem. So, I did the good daughter thing and took them to my parents.  No problem with them liking the cupcakes!
My 88 year old father is happy to have cake of any kind everyday. My 80 year old mother is happy to have a break from baking. My outrageous cupcake spend was justified.

The Frost is on the Pumpkin, and the tomatoes

It's been a busy week at work and my time at home has been minimal and most of it spent in the dark! I hate that about fall and winter. Leave for work in the dark, come home in the dark and don't see your property or your animals in the daylight from Sunday evening to Saturday morning.  But enough complaining.

Even though its been mild during the day we had enough frost this week to kill the tomatoes. The evening before the frost I picked seven of the nicest, largest green tomatoes and brought them in to ripen. If I am lucky they will ripen without rotting. All the rain we had early in the week is hard on the tomatoes - makes them crack and rot from the inside out. Everyone I know has complained about the poor tomato crop this year. Too much rain all the way around. Strangely though, peppers of all kinds have done very well. I always thought peppers liked hot and dry but apparently not. Then again, all those beautiful peppers we see at the grocery all winter come from greenhouses in Holland. And that gets me thinking again about having my own hydroponic green house to raise lettuce and tomatoes for the restaurant trade. Next year maybe.

I keep the big brush mower, which I call a bush hog (but I think that's a trade name), attached to the back of my tractor. Normally I would have had my brother help me take it off to store for the winter but I've left in on for a couple of reasons.  I've been feeding big 500 plus pound round bales for the last month and the bush hog gives me weight on the back of the tractor to balance the round bales on the front. The other reason is, with all the rain, I've needed to mow weeds - particularly pig weed which everyone is complaining about this year. Pig weed grows like , well, a weed!  I've mowed it four times this season (normally I mow twice) and its one of those weeds that just keeps coming.  It has spiny sharp thorns up and down the stem. It grows about two feet tall, branches out like an umbrella with many flower heads held high above the foliage.  The cows like to eat those flower heads which are full of seeds - and then they pass the seeds all over the property in their manure.  I didn't have pig weed two years ago, but it came in with some hay and now it is epidemic! 

I've picked the last of the French filet green beans and they are in the freezer. Freezing green beans is by far the best way to preserve them, especially these French filet types. Its so easy as well - just blanch them in hot water for a couple of minutes, rinse in cold water, pat dry, spread out on big jelly roll pan and freeze for an hour or two, then bag them in plastic freezer bags and you are done! In the middle of winter they will seem like such a luxuary!

Candied Lemon Peel

I candied lemon peel last evening. It's so easy, and the end product is perfect for my fruit cake recipe. I only had two lemons on hand and my recipe calls for six so I just made 1/3 of the syrup required and it worked great. Here's how I did it:

Wash lemons in hot water to get them clean. You are eating the peel after all.  With a sharp paring knife score the lemon in quarters from top to bottom. That is, score the skin, do not cut through to the flesh.
Working between the score lines pull away the peel. What's left is a lemon with a white membrane holding it together.I had squeezed one of my lemons already and had saved the shells. They were two halves of a lemon, so I just scored the halves once each  and peeled - it worked just fine. I threw away the white membrane.

Cut the strips into long cross wise pieces about 1/4 to 1/8 inch wide. Put the pieces in a sauce pan and generously cover with water. Bring to a boil. Boil for a minute or so then drain the strips, rinse in hot tap water and return the strips to the pan. Repeat this boiling process two more times. Return the strips to the pan and cover with water once more. This only takes a few minutes. Simmer them now for about 20 minutes.

Drain the strips and in the same sauce pan make a syrup of water, sugar and white corn syrup.  My recipe for six lemons called for 1 1/2 cups sugar to 1 1/2 cups water and six tablespoons of corn syrup. Stir the mixture together well and bring to a boil, stir a little more and add the lemon peel. Bring the pan to a strong simmer (bubbly but not a hard boil) and cook until the syrup begins to disappear, about 10 minutes. The longer you cook it the more candied the peel becomes, and harder. It goes fairly quickly so don't leave it unattended. You can stir the mixture from time to time at this point as well.

When the peel was almost boiled down I fished it out of the syrup with a fork and arranged it on a cookie cooling rack with waxed paper under it to catch drips.  The recipe suggests you drop the strips into a bowl of superfine sugar, then lay them out on a rack to dry. That would eliminate the drips. I let mine dry and cool over night and then sugared them. No perticular reason other than I wanted to taste the peel before it was sugared and I needed to let it cool. Just my thing.  I don't think it makes a big difference.

This peel will be great chopped in fruit cake. It's also good just to eat as a candy - provided you like the sweet/bitter combo of lemon peel - which I do. Just like Shaker Lemon Pie!  But that's for another day.

Good Morning Sunshine!

I wish I had one of those fancy digital cameras with big lenses etc. Then I could take some really great pictures to share because the  views from my back porch are just beautiful.  I stepped out on the porch to check on some herbs I'm drying and two flocks of geese flew up from the little lake at the bottom of the hill and flew across the trees against a blue sky with the morning sun on their wings. Just beautiful.

On a food note, I'm enjoying big green salads every day now because the fall lettuce coming from the garden is so wonderful.  I take my salad to lunch and eat with the staff and volunteers - something we all look forward to each day for the good talk and social hour.  One of the volunteers looked at my salad which was full of beets, grapes, apples and chicken and with a big sigh announced, "My husband would be horrified at your salad. He would tell you that fruit cannot ever be on a green salad".  I love fruit on a green salad!  Sometimes I make a strictly vegetable salad, but given a choice, I'll always put fruit and cheese on it some how. I know her husband a little and refrained from pointing out that tomatoes are a fruit and most people see nothing wrong with putting them on salads. He's an older man and as some famous man said once "Young men have more virtue than old men, they have more generous sentiments".  I just smiled and happily muched lettuce with grapes.

The Three Sisters Feed Me Well

Another beautiful morning with a light rain. I spent a good hour feeding and watering chickens and cattle this morning and I loved being out in the soft, light rain. The animals are all content and happy, they love this mild weather.

I'm enjoying eating from the "three sisters" this fall- that is the Native American food stuff trinity of corn, beans and squash.  If you visit the Ft. Ancient Museum in southwest Ohio you will see a demonstration garden growing the "three sisters" in the manner practiced by the Native Americans who lived in and around Ft. Ancient. They grew tall stalks of corn in a little tepee like circle, grew the beans so they climbed up the stalks of the corn and planted the sticky squash vines at the base of the corn to keep the wild critters away. It's very effective.  I am going to try this method in my garden next year. Each year I have to rotate my tomatoes and beans to different locations in the garden to keep disease and critters away and next year I planned to plant a lot more corn. I already have a place designated for corn, so I can just add the squash and beans to the corn and that should work very well! Then I can harvest all the three sisters at once!

Here's one of my favorite soup recipes. I use butternut squash because its a mild squash and makes a good base for other flavors. I save acorn squash for roasting with butter and thyme or butter and brown sugar as it is a more flavorful squash and makes a good side dish.

 Butternut Squash Soup 

1 butternut squash

1/2 cup finely chopped yellow onion

1 tablespoon cooking oil

1 tablespoon butter

1 glove garlic, minced

3 cups chicken stock or broth or more depending on the size of the squash

1/4 teaspoon salt

pinch of ground black or white pepper

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

dusting of nutmeg, freshly ground

Cut the squash in half length wise, scrape out the seeds and place cut side down in a baking dish with a cup or two of water. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour or until the flesh of the squash is tender. Let the squash cool, then scoop out the soft squash flesh.

In the meantime, chop the onion and saute it in the oil and butter in a large saucepan until it is softened and transparent. Add the garlic and saute a minute, then add the three cups of stock, the squash flesh,  the salt, pepper and ginger. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the soup from the stove and with an immersion blender, blend the soup until it is smooth. Taste to correct seasoning. Grate the nutmeg into the soup and serve. I like to serve it with cheddar cheese crackers.

The ginger gives the soup a spicy kick. You can add a little pumpkin pie spice to make it more a sweet spice flavor.  You can also eliminate the ginger and season the soup with thyme and parsley. Either way this makes a thick, creamy soup that is very healthy and tasty at the same time.

More New Tricks

I finally took the time to learn a little bit about a program called Picasa today. Picasa is a Google program to help manage pictures - lots of pictures. I had taken a bunch of pictures before, during and after my niece's wedding and wanted to put them together in a collage and send them to her. Picasa helped me do that.

I had so much fun that I made another collage of one of the tours we do at work. The collage you see on the blog is of our Lantern Light Cemetery Tour. It's a history lesson with re-enactor's playing notable people from our town's past who are buried in the local cemetery. We visit 20 graves, 12 of which have folks dressed in period costume portraying the honored dead. It's a very popular tour and we will be conducting the last one for this year this Saturday evening.

History Lessons in the Cemetery

Lantern Light Cemetery Tour - Next tour Saturday, Oct 15th.

This is the fifth time we've staged a cemetery tour with costumed interpreters portraying the honored dead. This is so much fun, I never get tired of it.  We have 14 different persons of note portrayed by our Glendower Historic Characters.They each spend three or four minutes talking about "themselves".  The very first gravesite we visit is a famous opera singer and we have an opera student who sings an aria as you enter the tour.  There is a Civil War section and my sister who plays the violin,  plays Civil War songs as the folks tour through that area. At the end of the tour is the Shaker grave marker for the people called Shakers or the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing as they were offically known. At that site one of the "Shaker sisters" sings some of the favorite Shaker songs.   Our Historian leads the tour giving extra bits of information as we go along. This tour is in our main cemetery and will be repeated next July.
Our Pioneer Cemetery will have a similar tour on Memorial Day weekend. The Glendower Historic Characters will be on hand to portray our earliest pioneers of note. Check out http://www.wchsmuseum.org/ for more information.

Fall Harvest and Pumpkin Time

I've been so busy with work these last two weeks that I haven't spent much time in the garden - which was ok since most of vegetables I planted the first of August for fall harvest were not quite ready. Yesterday, however, I finally had a day to myself and enjoying the sunshine found that lettuce, beets and French Filet green beans were ready to pick!

French Filet green beans are long, thin bush green beans picked young and tender. They are often added to Salad Nicoise or served with almonds or cold with a vinaigrette. My mother gave me the seeds as they are her favorite. I was able to pick a nice "mess" of beans for her and still have plenty for me.

One of the older gentlemen from work brought in a load of pumpkins and squash from his garden. I brought home a butternut squash and a spaghetti squash. I've never tried a spaghetti squash and am looking forward to cooking it.  I'd like to try making butternut squash ravioli but don't really want to make all that pasta, so I bought won ton wrappers instead. I'll let you know how that works out.

Happy The Bride the Sun Shines on Today!

We've had such beautiful weather this week, all sunny and dry, with a little fog some mornings. Perfect fall weather. Today is my neice' wedding day. As I walked out to chicken house this morning to feed and water the hens I couldn't help repeating "happy the bride the sun shines on today".  I wish her much joy and happiness in this new beginning.

The young couple will be very busy with their jobs and their new home. They bought a big house and have spent the summer painting, landscaping and shopping for furniture. They are mostly second shift workers - that is they go to work in the afternoon and work through the evening, so most of their time together will be mornings and early afternoons.  Neither of them are foodies so I imagine all the kitchen wares she received at her bridal showers will get very little use at least for a while.

So here's my recipes for one of my favorite homemade salad dressings, perfect for big green lunch salads.

Honey Ginger Vinaigrette

2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

pinch salt (optional)

pinch black pepper

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

5 tablespoons canola oil

In a glass jar with a tight fitting screw on lid place the rice wine vinegar and the salt and pepper. Shake well to help dissolve the salt. Stir in the honey until it blends with the vinegar. Add the soy sauce, ginger and sesame oil and shake. Finally, add the canola oil and shaker very well until the dressing is emulsified.  Pour over salad greens and enjoy. 

This dressing is really good over a salad of mixed lettuce leaves, ripe tomatoes and crunchy croutons. The salty, sweet, gingery dressing goes really well with the acid of the tomatoes.Or substitute walnuts for the croutons.

When the tomato season is over, this is equally good with a salad of lettuce, apples or pears, and pecans.

And last but not least, try chopping up Chinese cabbage or other green cabbage, chopped cooked chicken, sliced almonds, chopped apples, and golden raisins. Dress the salad with the honey ginger dressing and let sit in the refrigerator for half an hour or more to blend the flavors. Yum!

Curried Chicken Salad

Another beautiful morning. This is the kind of weather that makes us all love October. I opened Copperfield's Coffee Cafe in October  2005. Right from the beginning the Curried Chicken Salad was the most popular dish we offered (with the exception of one of my mother's homemade fruit pies). I offer the recipe here and suggest you serve it with my tomato soup recipe.

Curried Chicken Salad

2 cups chopped cooked chicken meat

1/2 cup chopped celery

1/2 cup chopped green onion

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/4 teaspoon of salt

pinch of black pepper

1 teaspoon sweet curry powder

juice of half a lemon

1/2 to 3/4 cup Hellman's mayonnaise or to taste.

In a wide bowl (so you can mix it easily and well) mix together all the ingredients except the lemon juice and mayonnaise.  Mix well so that the seasonings are all evenly distributed. This is a very important step. Then add the mayonnaise and lemon juice and mix well.  It's best to let this salad sit in the refrigerator for an hour or so to let the curry powder develop. It will turn the chicken salad yellow (that's the turmeric) and blend all the flavors.

A note about the chicken.  I either bake bone in,  skin on chicken at 400 degrees, then cool it, skin it and chop it, or I poach skinless, boneless chicken breasts. To poach the chicken put the raw, washed chicken meat in a baking dish, add a little salt and pepper and enough water to come about half way up the chicken.  Cover it with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the pieces of meat. The chicken will be moist and tender and low fat and you can use the broth that develops from the poaching liquid as a soup base. Enjoy.

Looking for Chess Pie

The first Tuesday of the month is garden club meeting night.  Garden club is a little oasis of good time and fellowship in a hectic world. The members are all women, all ages with many different backgrounds and with a common love of gardening. There's always a short business meeting, then a program and lastly refreshments. If I'm dieting I always save up my sweets intake for garden club night as the ladies who act as hostesses always provide wonderful food.

Last night was no exception. One of the hostessesmade a special trip to Graeters to bring us a chess pie.  As she told the story she'd had to go to several of their store locations to get the pie as it sells out quickly on Monday mornings. If you don't know Graeters Ice Cream and Pastry stores you should give them a try. They are the best!

I'd never eaten chess pie before, although I've read about it in articles on historical food. It's a form of custard pie with a pastry crust.  I love egg custard, especially when I'm not feeling well and of course I love creme brulee for its rich flavor.  The chess pie was more delicate in flavor than either of those, sweet but not too sweet, rich but not too rich. I must find a recipe!  Will keep you posted.

Record Breaking Year for Agrigulture

What were beautiful golden fields of soybeans last week are now dried out brown fields ready for harvest. Although I've not seen anyone picking beans yet (its probably too wet to get the equipment in the fields) I've been reading the preditions for this year's harvest and it's looking more than good. The US Department of Agriculture is prediting a smaller than expected harvest but the value of that harvest is way beyond anything we've ever seen before. The USDA's Economic Research Service projects that the total United States farm income will be $103.6 billion dollars up 31% from last year's total. That's basically income from corn and soy beans - those two staples of midwest agriculture. The corn is going to ethanol production and the beans to China. This will be the best year in the history of the United States for farm income. The best year previously was 2004 at $84.7 billion.

It's not all wine and roses however. The cost of inputs (seed, fertilizer, etc) has gone up 20% this year and is predicted to go higher still. 2012 will be a fairly flat year because of those increases.

Beef, pork and poultry prices will stay pretty steady because of the draught which is causing western farmers to slaughter their herds. But you may already be seeing the effect of high grain prices in the cost of milk. I paid $2.89 for a gallon yesterday. Last week I paid $2.39, the week before that $1.79.  I have been seeing the effects of demand for corn and soybeans in the high price of chicken and cattle feed - both of which have more than doubled in the last year.  The beef I send to slaughter this fall will have eaten more grass and less grain than any animals I've previously raised for freezer beef.

I'm glad that our agriculture imports are helping with the balance of trade to China, but once again the American people (that's you and me) will pay the price for China's prosperity with higher food prices. Somewhere I hope this all balances out.