I enjoy cooking, but lately I have really started to appreciate make-ahead freezer meals (prep them for the week, defrost the one you need and go!) and crockpot dinners.

The crockpot has been a long-time favorite of mine, especially in the fall when the leaves start to change and I put a pot of chili on to cook and simmer, blending together all those wonderful flavors and spices.

When I married into the Duggan family, I learned about all-day coffee. Up until that point I believed coffee was strictly a morning drink. My dad was the coffee drinker in our house and I never saw him with a cup of coffee outside of the early morning hours. Of course, he could have been at work guzzling the caffeinated wonder bean by the pot, but I would never know that.

I suspect few people know that the various species of sumac plants have to their credit an especially long list of medicinal uses by Europeans in ages past, by American Indians, by our pioneers, and by early American physicians.  Even the name “sumac” is thought to be of Arabian origin. We usually notice our sumac species—the smooth, or dwarf, sumac—only in late summer or early fall after its leaves and fruit have turned to that beautiful red. Unfortunately, I have space to mention only a smattering of the many ways the sumacs have been used medicinally throughout human history.