Scones and More Scones

I've been doing more baking than usual lately, and I'm especially happy with the scones I've made from recipes in Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Café. She gives only two actual recipes, with suggestions for variations, but unfortunately, the recipes aren't included on her otherwise quite wonderful website, http://www.molliekatzen.com . So I'll have to provide them.

I made these first; they're the Corn Scones on page 93. I added 1/2 cup of currants. We had them for breakfast with a scoop of cottage cheese, some carrot juice, and some wonderful Brazilian coffee that one of Joe's grad students brought back from a trip home. It was a great start to the day. Joe has commented on the interesting "topography" of these scones, their little hills and valleys and canyons, which reflect the buttery flakiness of the scones themselves. But they're not too buttery or sweet, unlike many we buy in bakeries - just buttery and sweet enough, and very satisfying. One of the nicest things about both these recipes is the way they make use of more than just all-purpose flour - the first with cornmeal and the second with bran.

These are the Ginger-Oat variation of the Bran Scones on page 92, with the addition of 1/2 cup chopped dried apricots. I adore ginger in both sweet and savory dishes, and I can happily eat chunks of crystallized or candied ginger just like candy. I also absolutely love dried fruits and keep several different kinds in the kitchen. They add so much to all kinds of thins, from oatmeal to baked goods to something as simple as a bowl of dried fruit and nuts for snacking. 

      In addition to their deliciousness, Katzen's method for making scones is wonderfully easy, using the food processor and no other bowls! In making scones, it's important that the ingredients are cold, especially the butter, to ensure flakiness, and the quickness of mixing things up in the food processor means things don't warm up too much and that the gluten in the flour doesn't get developed, which would result in an entirely different texture, and scones are all about texture. So, without further ado, here are the recipes.

CORN SCONES - makes 6 large or 8 smaller ones

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1 cup cornmeal

2 tsp. baking powder

1/8 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 to 1/3 cup sugar, depending on how sweet you like things

6 Tbsp. cold butter

2/3 cup cold buttermilk

1 large egg

1/2 cup currants (my addition)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly spray both a baking tray (I like to line mine with unbleached parchment paper and then spray it) and a 1/3 cup measure with nonstick spray.

     Place flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a food processor and process briefly to combine them.

     Cut butter into thin slices and distribute them over the dry mixture. Using several long pulses, process until the mixture resembles a coarse meal.

     Pour the buttermilk into a 2-cup liquid measure; add the egg and beat with a small whisk or fork till blended; stir in currants. With the processor running, pour buttermilk mixture through the feed tube and as soon as the batter comes together - just 2 or 3 seconds, really! - turn off the machine.

     Remove the blade and scrape the batter that's stuck to it into the processor bowl. Use the 1/3 cup measure to scoop out blobs of batter and place them on the baking tray, leaving them as far apart as you can. I make 8 from this recipe and they're plenty big enough.

     Bake in the center of the oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown spots appear all over. Cool on a rack at least 15 minutes before serving.

GINGER-OAT SCONES makes 6 - 9 (because of the added dried apricots, I got 9)

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 cup oat bran

1/3 cup rolled oats

2 tsp. baking powder

1/8 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup minced crystallized ginger

6 Tbsp. cold butter

2/3 cup buttermilk

1 large egg

1/2 cup quartered dried apricots 

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly spray both a baking tray (I like to line mine with unbleached parchment paper and then spray it) and a 1/3 cup measure with nonstick spray.

     Place flour, oat bran, rolled oats, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, and crystallized ginger in a food processor and process briefly to combine them.

     Cut butter into thin slices and distribute them over the dry mixture. Using several long pulses, process until the mixture resembles a coarse meal.

     Pour the buttermilk into a 2-cup liquid measure; add the egg and beat with a small whisk or fork till blended; stir in apricots. With the processor running, pour buttermilk mixture through the feed tube and as soon as the batter comes together - just 2 or 3 seconds, really! - turn off the machine.

     Remove the blade and scrape the batter that's stuck to it into the processor bowl. Use the 1/3 cup measure to scoop out blobs of batter and place them on the baking tray, leaving them as far apart as you can. I made 9 from this recipe and they were just the right size.

     Bake in the center of the oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown spots appear all over. Cool on a rack at least 15 minutes before serving.

If you've never made scones, these are wonderful recipes to start with. In fact, I can't say too much about  Sunlight Café. It's a wonderful book and worth the price just for the muffin and scone recipes, but Katzen gives you so much more! Bon appétit!

Comfort Food and Love: A Bit of a Rant

Last Thursday Joe had oral surgery preparatory to dental implants. It was out-patient surgery but he had general anesthesia, so he was pretty much out of it all of the first day and quite mellow with pain medication the second. His mouth is still sensitive, so he's not eating anything too chewy or crunchy just yet, though we're well past the protein shakes three meals a day stage.
     Then a couple of nights ago he asked for tomato soup, so I made some based on the recipe in The New Laurel's Kitchen, with just a couple of minor variations:

I looked for a link to that recipe but couldn't find one (there are links to other recipes from that book on the web, however), so here it is, with a few minor tweaks.

Creamy Tomato Soup
1 medium onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 good-sized carrot, chopped
1 T. oil
3/4 tsp. dried oregano or 1 1/2 tsp. fresh
1 1/2 tsp. dried basil or 1 T. fresh (the general rule is to use twice as much fresh herb as dried)
4 cups cut-up tomatoes or 2 14 oz. cans diced tomatoes in juice
2 - 3 cups hot vegetable (or chicken) stock
3/4 tsp. salt or to taste (some commercial stocks are pretty salty)
pepper to taste
1 cup whole milk (or 1/2 cup dried milk powder blended with enough water to make 1 cup liquid milk)

In a big pot, sauté the onion, celery, and carrot in the oil until soft. Add oregano, basil, and tomatoes and simmer gently about 5 minutes. Add the stock, bring to a boil, and simmer another 10 minutes or so.
     Remove from heat and use a slotted spoon to lift out the solids and transfer to a blender or food processor. My standard-sized blender is just big enough for this. Now be careful when you purée hot things - the pressure can build up unpleasantly and lead to a real mess. I take the clear plastic thing out of the middle of the blender lid and put a clean folded dish towel over the opening, holding it on with my hand. That's what I've seen the pros do on the cooking shows and it seems to allow enough air in to avoid explosions while keeping the lid on (literally). Blend until smooth and then return to the pot along with the milk to reheat a moment before serving.

     Yes, it would be much easier to open a can of Campbell's soup, and when I was a kid, that lovely red label did mean comfort - Joe still likes it but he says he likes mine better (I suppose he has to say that, but I do believe him). Certainly Campbell's is cheaper than homemade. But I just don't like canned soup. Maybe it's un-American, but that's the way it is. I don't hate it, at least not the tomato soup, but I really don't like it.
     When we were kids my grandmother bought Campbell's tomato soup and cream of mushroom soup. My brother absolutely adored the cream of mushroom. Maybe he still does. I thought it was okay. But now I truly do dislike it. I just don't understand the appeal; I can always taste it, no matter what it's in. It's the reason we don't have green bean casserole at Thanksgiving, though I'm sure there are recipes that don't involve cans of soup, cans of beans, and cans of fried onions. Maybe I just like green beans too much to subject them to such cruel treatment.
      Last night Joe asked for macaroni and cheese so I made a big pot of it, again from scratch. I don't know if I'd still like the Kraft version that I used to think of as comfort food years ago. Joe admits to a guilty fondness for it. Anyway, I was planning for leftovers and there were none.
     Tastes change over time and with exposure to different foods. The cheese sandwiches I used to eat with Campbell's tomato soup were made with Velveeta and Miracle Whip on spongy white bread and I loved them. I don't think I even tasted real mayonnaise until I left home. I was a white bread kid until I moved in with a roommate who only ate whole wheat and I thought, "Yeah, why not, if it's important to her?" Of course that was also in San Francisco, one of the world's great food cities, a city which changed my life in many ways, but Lorraine Brown, with her insistence on whole wheat bread, deserves recognition, wherever she is today.
     I find all this very interesting, and I am concerned about our country's continuing shift to more and more processed foods. Michael Pollan, in In Defense of Food, offers a very readable treatment of the topic, along with the sensible advice that we not eat anything our grandmothers would not have recognized as food. Maybe, given my grandmother's use of canned soups, that should be our great-grandmothers. In The End of Overeating, David A. Kessler, M.D. explains how the processed food folks get us hooked on their products by the sneaky and clever addition of way more sugar, salt, and fat than real food needs.
     To come back to today's title, food is one of the ways humans have always offered comfort and shown love, and providing real food just seems more loving to me, though I understand that our lives are busy and our culture has conditioned us to believe that processed foods are quicker and taste better. And I'm not so pure myself - I have my bad food flings, but mostly we do eat healthy food that doesn't come in boxes with ingredients very few of us can either recognize or pronounce. So that's my rant for today. I think it's past time for lunch.

Dolce Italiano

For my birthday, back in April, our friends Patrick and Rita gave me a wonderful cookbook, Dolce Italiano by Gina de Palma, the pastry chef at Mario Batali's Babbo restaurant. The first thing I made was the lemon sorbetto, which is better than the same thing at Macaroni Grill - although I liked what I had at Macaroni Grill enough to want to make my own ;-). But the latest thing I've made from this lovely cookbook is the fantastic Sweet Grape Focaccia (Schiacciata d'Uva).
     You can find de Palma's recipe at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_878212_27/102-4922359-3547367?ie=UTF8&docId=1000135161&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=browse&pf_rd_r=1E4C5H5RXM87FQ77214M&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=310474901&pf_rd_i=1102650 . My play-by-play commentary follows:

 

Here's the Schiacciata on the cooling rack, looking rather less impressive than in real life (the browner-than-usual top is because for some reason it wasn't browning so I popped it under the broiler for a minute). It's very big, having been baked in the largest rimmed cookie sheet I have, 9" x 18", and amazingly rich and tender, since unlike the usual focaccia, it's sweet (but not too sweet) and made with 3 sticks of butter and 6 eggs. BUT, it is a very big pastry! De Palma says it will serve 10 to 12 but those would be quite large servings - this pan would give you 18 three-inch squares.
     It's a yeast bread, but very delicate, and with no kneading. I started it around 8  in the morning and had it ready in time to pack up a quarter of it to take to my mom's for lunch.

I like the rustic look of cooking parchment tied with yarn, but I learned in doing this that regular Scotch tape doesn't stick to parchment. Maybe stickers would work . . . . there must be something one could use.

 This is the first step, proofing the yeast in warm water and milk. I love the way the surface looks as the tiny bubbles appear and disappear, creating a sort of extraterrestrial or lunar map effect.

 Then you beat in 1 1/2 cups flour to make a sponge:

 and leave it for its first rise.

 Then it goes into the mixer bowl (where I will start it next time - de Palma has you using two bowls but that's just silly, since it means more dishes to wash) for the rest of the ingredients and another rise in a buttered bowl.

 After rising it goes into (onto?) the pan. You can see how puffy and delicate the dough is. I line my pan with parchment and then spray it with cooking spray, both because I'm not a big fan of cleaning up baked on stuff on cookie sheets and because, when it's done, you can just lift it out in one piece by carefully picking up the parchment extending out at the ends of the pan to transfer it to a cooling rack. Otherwise the large, delicate pastry may break - alternatively, you could just cool it in the pan.

 De Palma says to poke little holes in the dough with your fingers and put the grapes in, or you can just pour the grapes over the dough and push them in where they fall (my method). Then sprinkle the dough with some raw or turbinado sugar and bake it. I use Zulka, a raw sugar from Mexico that's less expensive than the raw or turbinado sugar at the natural food stores; it's available it the Hispanic supermarkets here in Tucson: El Super and Food City. (El Super is a fairly new addition to the supermarket scene here and I love it for its wonderful produce, like green garbanzos and verdolagas, and its amazing deli and bakery, as well as its reasonable prices. Joe loves it too - when we first went he said it was like going to a food museum and getting to take the exhibits home with us!)

 So here's the Schiacciata ready for the oven and in 18 - 20 minutes it's done.
     It's so easy and so delicious, and I think it would be wonderful with other fruits as well: cherries, sliced peaches or plums . . . . Di Palma uses Concord grapes but those are hard to find here in the Southwest, so I used seedless red grapes and they worked very well. Sometimes we get wonderful black seedless grapes and when I have the chance I'll try those. She specifies 2 cups of grapes, but I used a few more, since they were large grapes. I'd say, start with 2 cups of fruit and then add more if you think you'd like it.
     And I really do think you'll like it!

Oh my, it's been a long time since my last posting! Here's one thing I've accomplished in the interim.

This is a gift for a little girl who was born August 8.  I haven't actually seen her yet, not even a picture, but I'm sure she's lovely. Her mother was one of Joe's students several years ago and she and her parents became our dear friends.
     Now their family has added a generation, and I am reminded that in a way this photo also links generations of my family. My mother made the afghan squares some years ago when she was still crocheting and recently gave a box of them to me; I assembled them and added the edging, so in a very real way it's a gift from both of us.
     The oak rocker in the picture dates back to 1919. My maternal grandparents bought it - from the Sears catalogue, I think - when their first child, my aunt, was born, so that my great-grandmother could rock her in it when they came to visit. It wasn't an expensive piece and I don't suppose the experts on Antiques Roadshow would tell me it would make my fortune at auction, but I'm so happy it's still in the family. It gives me a warm feeling of belonging to something that started long before I was born and will continue through our children and grandchildren, generation after generation. I expect our friends in New Mexico are having similar feelings as they embrace the newest member of their family, and I hope that when she is wrapped in this blanket, she feels the love that went into it.

By the Beautiful Sea Part 2

It's good to visit Laguna Beach on a weekday when everything, including the beach, is less crowded, and if you're willing to walk a couple of blocks you can find a free parking space. We found ours up the hill a bit, across from the high school and some charming cottages; there are five of these in a row.
     Our first destination was the beach, after we got some coffee, that is. En route to Starbucks we found this welcoming sign to make us smile.

Happily caffeinated, we made our way to the beach. I took off my sandals and rolled up my jeans to wade in the surf; I got my jeans wet anyway, but didn't mind.

We couldn't tell if the tide was coming in or going out, but it washed up a lot of seaweed and then arranged it artistically in the foam. Nature's art is so much better than ours (but we keep creating anyway).

The beach is in the middle of town and draws all kinds of people (and seagulls, of course),

and there are good public restrooms with outdoor showers for hosing off the sand and salt. As we headed that way I heard someone playing the "Blue Danube Waltz" on an accordion, so I dug in my bag for a dollar and followed the music. The accordionist apologized for not accepting tips! We chatted a few minutes and I told him that earlier Joe had remarked that for some reason, every time he drives Sam's (my uncle's) car, he hears the "Blue Danube Waltz" in his head.
     On the way back to the car we came to two lovely churches, side by side. The first was Episcopal and not open on a Wednesday afternoon, but we thought the second, the American Catholic Church, Saint Francis by-the-Sea, might be.

We didn't actually know what the American Catholic Church was, but we soon found out. As we approached the entrance, we met a woman who said she was about to open it up for a tour and we were welcome to join, then she let us in and talked with us while she lit the candles and turned on some music. It turns out that her grandfather, Percy Wise Clarkson, had built both this church and the Episcopal church next door, where he had first served but then left that pulpit to follow his own vision by establishing the American Catholic Church in the early 1930s. It was revolutionary and far ahead of its time in its insistence on racial and gender equality and Bishop Clarkson's ideals, now familiar to many of us since they've become part of New Age philosophy and spirituality, are beautifully recorded on the rafters of the sanctuary.

The sanctuary is tiny, seating about fifty people at most, but beautiful, and most certainly a sacred space.

While we waited for the tour group, which turned out to be another couple plus their tour guide, Bishop Clarkson's granddaughter, Jessica deStefano,  told us more about her grandfather, his church, and its current bishop, who is ill, so there are no masses at this time, though the church itself is open on Sundays from 9 to 10 for meditation and prayer. We learned later that Jessica is an artist - Joe found her website, http://www.jessicadestefano.com/index.htm, where you can see her and some of her lovely work, some serious, some delightfully whimsical.  We wound up joining the tour and enjoying it very much. The other couple were very nice, as was their guide, Lorraine Brown, who turned out to be a U of A graduate; we knew we looked familiar to each other! I tried to find her online but couldn't, nor any listings for tour guides in Laguna Beach, but I think she'd be a wonderful one, if only we knew how to get in touch with her.
     When we got back to Sam and Vera's, Joe googled American Catholic Church; it does exist outside Laguna Beach but Saint Francis by-the-Sea seems to be independent of the national organization, which is very small. It is located at 430 Park Avenue, just up the hill from Laguna Beach's main street, and although there's no website for the church itself, it's mentioned on several others. The contact phone is (949) 497-4678.  It's well worth a visit. 

     Our serendipitous tour of Saint Francis marked the end of a great day of exploring: hiking, picnicking, strolling along the Dana Point harbor, wading in the surf, and not going into a single shop or restaurant, except for that one necessary brief stop at Starbucks! How wonderful it was to top it off by spending time with friendly and interesting people who introduced us to a piece of history we hadn't known about and its beautiful setting. Mark Twain was right: "...nothing so liberalizes a man and expands the kindly instincts that nature put in him as travel and contact with many kinds of people."

By the Beautiful Sea 2011

 On Tuesday Joe and I flew over to visit my aunt and uncle in Corona del Mar, Orange County, CA. We left as the temperature was climbing to 115 in Tucson and arrived on a cool (mid-70s) and beautiful sunny day - we could smell the sea air as soon as we stepped out of the airport!

On Wednesday my aunt and uncle generously insisted we take their car to go do the tourist thing, and they didn't exactly have to twist our arms. We always enjoy going down to Laguna Beach but this time, in a spirit of exploration, we drove through  LB and headed farther south, though not too far. At Dana Point the highway seemed to run out, literally, so rather than get on Interstate 5 we decided to explore what had become Las Ramblas Drive (or Road, or something) to its dead end, where we found a trailhead leading up a hill that promised interesting views. It was time for a hike!

These thistles are prickly and probably non-native, but they have their own beauty, I think (and they made me want an artichoke - one of their cousins - for dinner!).  One of my favorite novels, Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, has a supernatural and not very nice character called "the man with the thistledown hair." Well, here's some thistledown. Lovely, isn't it? It's easy to imagine what a headful of such hair would look like.

At last we neared the top

and looked down the other side

to where too many people live in too many houses rushing all the way down to the sea. But it's not hard to see why so many people want to live there, especially on such a gorgeous day. We enjoyed the view for a while and then (temporarily) turned our backs on all that civilization and started back down.

On the way up, the trail reminded me of these lines from Christina Rossetti (though she wrote them in an entirely different metaphorical context):

Does the road wind uphill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day's journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend.

In the next picture you'll see the end of the road, where we parked; if you can pick it out, the tiny little dot on the far left of the wider road on the left is my uncle's car, so you can see it was a bit of a climb, especially as we circled the hill rather than going straight up, choosing the longer rather than the much steeper trail (though we did take the steeper trail going down, which in retrospect wasn't terribly smart). 

 We were hungry by the time we got back to the car (no surprise) so we stopped at a grocery store, bought a big deli Greek salad and some sushi, and ate our picnic on a park bench at the Dana Point harbor. Then we walked some more, around the shops and up and back the full length of the harbor and all its marinas, which are lovely but would be more interesting if 99.9% of the boats weren't painted white.

We tossed pennies into the water for luck, and I wondered what the story was behind the cell phone down there in the water. Maybe its owner's luck had run out somehow . . . .

The nicest part of our walk was the park that runs parallel to the breakwater,

where people were enjoying the water, where I learned that Dana Point is named for Richard Henry Dana, Jr., who wrote the classic Two Years Before the Mast (which I've never read, but now I think I will),

and where we made the acquaintance of several of the dramatically colored Dana Point population of California ground squirrels. Some of these friendly little guys are almost entirely white, while others are more like pinto ponies or appaloosas, and they're not afraid of people at all, no doubt because they're used to being fed. I felt guilty that we'd eaten all our lunch and had nothing to offer them.

Feeling relaxed and refreshed by the cool sea breeze, and having fallen in love with Dana Point for its charm, its relatively small size, and its relative lack of pretension, we headed back the way we had come, stopping for a while in Laguna Beach on the way, but I'm afraid you'll have to wait at least until tomorrow for the second half of that day's adventure.

The Good Herbs - Mint

Mint is such a lovely herb with so many uses. It lends its flavor to delicious foods and beverages both sweet and savory - would Girl Scout cookies have become such a tradition without Thin Mints? Could the Kentucky Derby go on without mint juleps? Tabouli without mint is just - well, it's not tabouli. For some people, leg of lamb requires mint jelly and after the first time I tried it, I became a convert (mint jelly's as easy to make as any other jelly - easier than many). 

The zucchini are producing well in our garden (so I guess I'm doing a good job as a bee substitute - Joe's suggested I should wear a black and yellow striped rugby shirt and hum loudly as I go about my morning pollinating chores) and so it's time for one of my favorite simple soups, this one adapted from a 2007 recipe at Epicurious.com:

Zucchini - Mint Soup (serves 4)

2 tsp. olive oil

1 medium onion, peeled and diced

2 - 3 cloves garlic, peeled and pushed through a garlic press or minced fine

3 medium zucchini, in 1" cubes

2 cups chicken stock

1 cup milk

2 handfuls fresh mint (leaves and tender stems; discard any tough-ish stems)

salt and pepper to taste

In a large pan sauté the onion in olive oil over medium heat till soft. Add garlic and zucchini and sauté another minute or 2 or 3, then add stock and milk and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 5  minutes. 

     Remove from heat and stir in the mint, then use a slotted spoon to transfer the solids (and some of the liquid) to the blender and purée. Hot liquids in the blender can be temperamental; I take out the clear plastic insert that goes in the middle of the cover and hold a clean dishtowel over the opening - that seems to let enough of the hot air escape to avoid the kind of dramatic whoosh and possible explosion that can occur if you cover it too tightly.

     Return the puréed soup to the pan and stir it all together, season to taste with salt and pepper, then serve in bowls garnished with a few mint leaves, if you like.

Spearmint, pictured above, is used mostly for culinary purposes; peppermint is more often used for medicinal reasons. Peppermint tea can ease various tummy aches (and kids usually like it). According to Judith Fitzsimmons and Paula M. Bousquet, authors of Aromatherapy through the Seasons, a drop of peppermint oil massaged into your temples can help alleviate a headache, especially if you can sit quietly with your feet up and your eyes closed for a little while (but keep the peppermint oil away from your eyes!).

     Fitzsimmons and Bousquet also give a couple of formulas for rubs to use when you've over-exerted or strained muscles. I like this one (partly because the recipe is so simple, but also because it's effective):

Mix 10 drops each Peppermint, Eucalyptus, and Rosemary essential oils into 2 Tbsp. of a carrier oil (plain old vegetable oil works fine, but you can use jojoba, olive, avocado or most other oils as well).

Ice the area first if you've got a sprain, then massage with the oil blend. (Fitzsimmons' website, http://www.aromatherapysolutions.com/, gives some other recipes in the articles section.)

     Peppermint is invigorating and can help you feel alert and ready to start the day, especially in partnership with rosemary. In my post of December 30, 2010, I gave the recipe for Pantry Bath Salts.  The version Joe likes uses 15 drops each of peppermint and rosemary essential oil.

     The following "All-Purpose Spray" from Aromatherapy through the Seasons is meant to lift the spirits as well as clear the air, but the authors say it can also be used when ants invade the house (since that's happening right here, right now, I'm going to give it a try): 

All-Purpose Spray

4 drops Lavender essential oil 

2 drops Peppermint essential oil 

2 drops Tea Tree essential oil 

Mix into 2 cups of water and put in a spray bottle. Shake before using.

I first heard of mint as a pest repellent when I was a little girl and we started getting mice in the house. A neighbor suggested planting mint at the foundation at the back of the house, where we thought they were getting in. Whether it was the mint or a new cat, the mice vanished. Apparently ants don't like mint either; as I said, I'm about to test that theory, because I really hate the idea of chemical poisons.

     Mint is easy to grow, though it's happier in the ground than in a pot, no doubt because it has dreams of empire, i.e., it's one of the more invasive herbs you can plant. Here in hot, dry Arizona, I have mine in a relatively shady back corner of the garden where it gets plenty of water and yes, I am resigned to the idea that it will spread. I've tried various ways of containing it. One of the best, in the yard of a previous house, was to cut out the bottom of a plastic wastebasket, sink the basket in the ground so it wouldn't show, and plant the mint in it. The sides of the basket kept it from spreading out but with the bottom cut out it had plenty of drainage. I didn't do that this time, and I suppose I may regret it, but a thriving patch of mint is a beautiful thing to see, and a useful addition to any garden.