This blogger is in a state of blogging indecision.

I was informed by a very trusted source that I have showed up on the legal radar of a certain industrial food giant with a long litigious history. Believe it or not, I don't have the funds to match them in court. While an official cease and desist order has not been filed, it has made me painfully aware that my message is getting out. Just to the wrong people first.

Someone I turn to regularly for sage advice when I'm dealing with just about anything out of my scope offered this morsel of wisdom: "Fuck 'em. It will hurt them more than you if they shut you down". I agree. But this has required a lot of soul searching. Maybe some balls searching, too.

I'm not certain that I am done searching, but here's a brief update on my humble homestead:

• I made the ultimatum with my wonderful wife that any junk food (save for milk chocolate once a month) must be made in-house with quality ingredients. I am munching on a from-scratch sugar cookie as we speak.
• Our 2011 garden was a booming success and is now kind of a disappointing fizzle. We took squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and heirloom cherry tomatoes in droves. We gave away as much as we kept. Then it all kind of went to hell. The oppressive heat made keeping water on the garden nearly impossible and made weeding a far less appealing chore. We still have peppers in abundance and our brandywine tomatoes should produce some. The cherry tomatoes are still pretty strong. I am still giving the musk melon the benefit of the doubt, but I'm not betting money that they will produce. Overall, Garden 2011 was grossly more successful than Garden 2010. I'm marking this in the win column.
• Preserving is the new fad of the house. I canned home grown dill pickles again this year for Punkin'. Also I pickled some home grown sweet banana peppers for pizza making this winter. We bought a box of ding and dent West Virginia grown peaches. Wife and I dispatched those into a ton of half-pint preserves. I lost count. Really I did. Who knew that a single peach makes ALMOST a half-pint of preserves. Still on the docket is strawberry jam (maybe freezer jam) and probably some canned tomatoes.
• Another green step that we have been forced to make is living without air conditioning. Ours has been dying for years. As our home has casement style windows, a new unit runs in the neighborhood of the national debt. This year, we just turned it off. Here's how it went: HELL-LIKE! Don't do it! If you can help it, don't do it!