I would like to urge people to make bread at home once in awhile.  It is not THAT hard, although I am getting a machine assist from a Bread Machine dough cycle. What I am struck by, and want to share with the wider audience, is how much richer, filling, and more fulfilling home-made bread is as compared to not only sandwich bread, but also the fancier deli-style bread.  Supposedly it is the same stuff, but somehow it's not.  This is the stuff that made history, inspired legends, and fed mankind.   I now am on my 3rd SourDough bread attempt.  The first two used a bread yeast boost and turned out perfect.  The third reminds me some of sourdough in my youth .. it did not rise much, but it did rise and is also very tasty.

Rixey's Market, locally owned and operated by one Independence family for 51 years, has some excellent offerings of local food. Rixey's Market is located approximately 2 1/2 miles west of Independence on your left, on Wilson Highway (Route 58). Rixey's sells delicious milk from the Boyer Milk Company in Rural Retreat, VA for only $3.99 a gallon.

My daddy says that "organic gardening" means you split the garden with the wildlife 90%-10%, and guess who gets the 10%?

My daddy is pretty smart.

But I want to be an organic gardener; I really do. So as I walked down the rows this morning spewing white dust on everything, I lamented yet another failure on my part to produce food without resorting to chemicals. I read the label on the bag of dust with dismay. "Do not inhale. Do not ingest. Do not use near pets. Do not use near children. Absolutely lethal to fish and frogs." Oh, please God, somehow keep this out of the creek and out of the river.

So you dust, I say to daddy, this chemical on your plants and it ends up in the soil; won't it end up inside of your cucumbers and corn and potatoes, and then inside of you?

HOW FARMERS CAN SELL LOCALLY GROWN MEATS, FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

A NINTH DISTRICT AGRICULTURE CONFERENCE

Congressman Rick Boucher invites all of his constituents in the Ninth District to a local food conference to be held in Abingdon on Monday, July 28 at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center.  There will be no charge for attendance.  A number of speakers, including growers and retail buyers, will speak on the retail climate for local products, expanding opportunities for marketing, new trends in the marketplace, and other important issues.  To register for this conference, or for more information, call Rep. Boucher's Abingdon office at (276) 628-1145.  Cosponsors of this event include Grayson LandCare and Appalachian Sustainable Development.

Y P Gupta prepared chai on a visit to the homestead a few years ago. It was pleasant but not exciting. George Meyer, Steve Wolfe and I dined at Spice-n-Curry in South Durham NC, this week and the chai was exciting.

The restaurant is adjacent to an Indian food store and we stopped to sample their wares. I returned the next day and asked our waiter how they prepared chai. He explained that every Indian family has their own chai recipe just as they have their own recipe for dal. But after I persisted he took me to the store to acquire the ingredients - black tea (they prefer Assam but my wife prefers something more delicate like Darjeeling), cardamom pods, fresh ginger.

This is the recipe, enough to make two large mugs.