The peck that I picked and froze earlier this week diced down to about seven fat quart bags. I added fresh-picked and dried basil (I have a large screen on sawhorses up in the unfinished attic, where it gets really hot and dry) to all of them, and to three of those bags, I added chopped bell and hot peppers.

Today, I picked and froze up another four quarts with basil and to two of them, I added some red wine. We'll see how that works out.

Today's batch is especially pretty, as I used a lot of little, yellow pear tomatoes.

I've got enough Roma Tomatoes left over to make a lasagna for this evening.

A very cool site called MandarinTools.com has a page wherein you can find "your Chinese name." So I put in "Johnny Appleseed" (with my birthdate since it insisted on one) and found that maybe when Loud Obbs has a minute he might want to look into the story of Ai Jian Huan. Since the Philadelphia Inquirer is on the story too:

Farmers have been growing apples here since before the Civil War, and as times have changed, they have changed with them, planting smaller trees to speed up harvests and growing popular new varieties to satisfy changing tastes.

Like farmers in the bigger apple-producing states, they are becoming increasingly anxious about the prospect of China flooding the U.S. market with their fresh apples - an event many believe is inevitable, even if it could be years away.

Why is a country which for thirty years has been imposing a draconian population-control program--presumably at least in part because it has concerns about remaining able to feed its own people--taking over the fresh apple trade?

Well, because with labor policies like this, it can:

I'm not even going to quote any excerpts out of this superb piece from the San Jose Mercury News, (oops, originally WaPo) in large part because people's eating schedules are often irregular on Sundays and you don't want to read this either before OR after eating anything you didn't grow yourself or know who did. Well, okay, I'll just use the least-nausea-inducing graf I can find:

For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught - many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry.

Yum! I mean really, wouldn't you rather eat one of Lambert's zucchini than this Chinese stuff? Go read the story; the Tale of the Wandering Chickens is enough to send you out into the woods to gather nuts, berries and grubs rather than go to KFC again.