Great advice to go for the ones you can't get elsewhere. This is also what I always do. What I recommend be on your list is 1. lucardenasiana. Not only is it very easy to root, but it grows generously right off the bat and your cutting will look JUST as beautiful as the picture in his catalog. This is probably the most pleased I've been with any plant I've purchased from TG. So that's $20. Next, I'd put on 2. erythrina. This was on my first order to TG when I was still figuring things out and it still rooted easily. It is an extremely beautiful plant and, oddly, made prettier by the typical TG outdoor scarring. If you already have erythrina, then I'd go for cv. Christine or latifolia (I really love my var. concolor and you feel like you're getting your money's worth with a sturdy giant thing like this ^_~) or odettea (also roots easily and is very cute). So that's $10. For the remaining $5, I'd choose either bilobata, or montana! These are both cute plants that everyone should have. I should say at this point that an equally recommended route would be to go for megalantha for $30 straight up. I did not find this one difficult to root and it is difficult to get elsewhere. It grows quite well, too, if you keep it cool and humid. Make sure you get the one collected on Taveuni. It is more difficult to root according to the Swedes, but it's worth it! ========== Now, if it were me, (which I believe was the real question?) what I would be ordering is: 1. sp. Mindanao OR ilagiarum OR kloppenburgii 2. soligamiana OR sp. Germany OR D. rosea 3. D. acutifolia ... I didn't even have to look, because I made a list the other night. I just can't narrow it down. ^_^

I installed a 42" wide and 24" deep Rangecraft hood with 600 cfms over a gas 36" CC rangetop with 6 burners. My criteria when choosing a hood were: -42" wide -24" deep at least -baffles instead of mesh filters -600 cfm minimum -quiet -attractive shape I cook almost every meal from scratch every day, and, as a SAHM, I cook a lot. We also entertain a lot, which to me means that I cook for everyone. I don't do potlucks in my house...ever. I saute, steam, stir fry, simmer, and boil regularly. I haven't deep fried in the new kitchen, but will tomorrow when I fry Arancini di Riso for a dinner party. Aesthetically, I love the hood. I wanted an uber expensive Modernaire barrel hood, which was way out of my budget, but was lucky enough to find my RC on their clearance page for a decent price. Functionally, it's a bit too loud for me to use every time I cook. Like TR, I try to turn it on 5-10 minutes before cooking if I'm doing something really messy or stinky. Then, I let it run for at least 5 minutes afterwards. For just a grilled cheese, for example, I don't turn it on to save my ears and my mental sanity. I'd like to investigate putting a silencer in the duct run in a couple of years if that's possible. I throw my baffles in the DW about once a week or two. It's nice to see the grease on them instead of my kitchen. It's so easy to throw the baffles in the DW, and they come out perfectly clean every time. As far as the cfms go, I had planned on a 1000cfm Kobe until I found my RC hood. The hood already had a 600cfm fan installed, and, since it was clearance, it was as-is. I gambled that the wider hood would help make up for the less than recommended cfms. I find that on high, my hood does an adequate job of sucking HOGS for almost all my high-heat cooking. I seared some steaks once last winter in a very hot pan and found a little smoke and odor escaping. BUT I do all my messiest and stinkiest high-heat cooking on the rear center burner so the HOGS have the best chance of being captured by the hood. I do occasionally wish I had more cfms, if only for the noise factor. (A hood with 1000 cfms will be quieter at 400cfms than will a hood that maxes out at 400cmfs.) An in-line silencer would help mitigate my sound issues. As mentioned above, I think the depth of your hood is an important criteria often overlooked when shopping. Mine is 24" deep, but it just barely covers the front edge of my rangetop burners. 27" deep hoods aren't common, but I often wish mine was that deep. I sometimes see a little steam escaping out the front edge of the hood when I have the hood on the low setting. All in all (after all that rambling ;) ) and knowing what I know now, I would make the same hood choice again.

P. G. Wodehouse, one of my favorite book characters was Jeeves. Also one of those books which is somewhere in back of a bookcase, need to look. Mario Puzo can hit home, painfully. Like his quotes. Barry McGuire is an unknown to me. His quotes are biographical, so don't mean much to me. Walter Jon Williams is an old member of my bookshelves. He stays and does not go out with the donate book pile, which only very slowly gets bigger.

Cran, I am sorry to hear you have lupus. I hope yours is in remission. Mine presently is and it makes such a difference! I had a very long remission, 27 years until my stroke. For years I needed only survalance after initially, at 23, needing prednisone for kidney issues. Insoluble fiber acts just like resistance starch. So, I saw Dr. Kreigel' team at Yale but he recently left to work with Roche to develop possible treatment or vaccine for lupus so now I see a colleague of his. It is very hard to alter our flora but studies of high fiber diets and lower sugar were proven to work for matabolic syndrome, i.e. Type 2 diabetes, so it was suggested I beef up my fiber intake to atleast 20 grams a day. I eat two cups of all bran with unsweetened rice milk every day and have a bowl of steel cut oats for an afternoon snack to hit almost 30 grams of fiber. The rest of my diet is normal fruit, fish, veggies, yogurt, some treats, potatoes and pasta so the bran and oats are the change I made. Resistance starch is in pasta and potatoes and many other foods. Pasta and potatoes cooled after cooking are supposedly higher in resistance starch than heated is. Yams are a good source. I like to use food sources more than supplements. High fiber, low fat and sugar diets are proven to help maintain health and diverse gut bacteria. Fiber, (resistance starches) are considered prebiotics which feed the good bacteria while sugar and fat feed the unhealthier ones. Also have your vitamin d regularly checked. Insufficiency is linked to higher lupus and Antiphospholipid antibodies and thus flares. I now supplement for mine was low. xo