Short Bits 2026

Updated on 2026-05-17

Short Bits is my method of sharing information that would be too short for a separate blog post. Following are my short posts for 2026.

Contents

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• 01 – Check the Ingredient List When Purchasing Baked Goods in the Whole Foods Market Bakery (2026-02-06)
• 02 – Attempted to Try Fedora Linux (2026-04-18)
• 03 – My First Attempt at Water Bath Canning – Success! (2026-05-13)

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01 – Check the Ingredient List When Purchasing Baked Goods in the Whole Foods Market Bakery (2026-02-06)

If you buy baked goods made by Whole Foods Market bakery, you should check the ingredient list. About a year or two ago, I began to notice that Whole Foods Market bakery began using a GMO (genetically modified organism) ingredient in their cupcakes and in one of their pies. I was dumbfounded…Whole Foods Market, who prides themselves for selling organic food, using a GMO ingredient?! A few months ago, I noticed that they are now also using a GMO ingredient in their cookies. As a result, I choose not to purchase the products.

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02 – Attempted to Try Fedora Linux (2026-04-18)

Updated on 2026-04-30

I decided to try Fedora Linux this month. I did a little bit of research prior to making the decision to try Fedora Linux and I read a Distrowatch review by Jesse Smith about release 43. In the review Jesse stated that he wasn’t able to find a way to install Fedora Linux on a specific partition. However, I thought I’d try anyway. I downloaded the XFCE spin of release 43 and burned it to a USB thumb drive.

Jesse was right. There was no way to install Fedora Linux on a specific partition. I received an error stating that there wasn’t enough space on the drive I intended to install Fedora Linux on, but there was a 29 GB partition with nothing on it. However, for whatever reason, the Fedora installer wasn’t able to see it.

So, I thought I’d try installing the XFCE spin of release 42, available from the Fedora Linux public archives. However, I wasn’t able to even boot the live version of Fedora Linux from the USB thumb drive I installed it on. The UEFI boot menu on my computer showed two partitions for Fedora Linux. Attempting to boot from the first USB thumb drive partition just rebooted the computer. Attempting to boot from the second USB thumb drive partition brought up a GRUB prompt.

I did a little bit of research about Fedora Linux release 42 install errors. Although I found plenty of posts about errors, I wasn’t able to find a solution for the issue I was having.

Fedora 44 was released near the end of the month, so I thought I’d try installing the XFCE spin again. I discovered that you could install to a particular partition. Blame my initial impression on user ignorance. I got to the point where I was ready to install the system only to discover that Fedora defaults to using Btrfs as the file system for the system partition. I didn’t want to use Btrfs and there was no option to choose a different file system; e.g. ext4. Installation also would have resulted in a separate /boot partition, which I don’t care to use.

A less than stellar experience from such a major Linux distribution in my opinion. I don’t think I’ll ever try the distribution again.

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03 – My First Attempt at Water Bath Canning – Success! (2026-05-13)

Updated on 2026-05-17

I began following a low FODMAP diet last year, meaning that practically all retail salsa was off limits due to the fact that the salsas typically contain garlic and onion. Fody Food Company makes a low FODMAP salsa, but the taste was just okay. I thought I might be able to do better making my own low FODMAP salsa and canning it.

My first task was to find a low FODMAP salsa canning recipe, but I only found one. The recipe is called Choice salsa and it is available at the National Center for Home Food Preservation site at the University of Georgia.

Now that I had a recipe, it was time to purchase a water bath canner. I looked at the offerings on Amazon and I settled for a McSunley 21.5 quart water bath canner with a 5-piece canning tool set. I purchased the water bath canner and canning tool set in March.

In May, I purchased the ingredients from Whole Foods Market to make the canned salsa recipe. On May 11, I canned 6 pints of salsa. I had enough salsa to can 7 pints, but I didn’t have a clean canning lid. Therefore, I just put the leftover in a canning jar I had set aside for making ghee and I placed the jar in the refrigerator.

In the wee morning hours on May 13, I checked the 6 pints of canned salsa to make sure the seals were intact. The seals on all 6 pints were firmly intact.

While the canning process was a complete success, the salsa didn’t turn out that well. One problem was that the peppers I purchased that I thought were jalapeno peppers I don’t think were jalapeno peppers. I did remove the seeds and veins from the peppers because doing so is supposed to decrease the heat, but the salsa had no heat whatsoever. I think the produce personnel at Whole Foods Market may have placed the wrong peppers in the wrong bin. The peppers may have been Anaheim peppers, which aren’t nearly as hot as jalapeno peppers.

I put a heaping 1/4 tsp of dried ground cayenne pepper in the jar I had leftover and the addition of cayenne solved the lack of heat problem.

The other issue is that the salsa needs some kind of seasoning to make it taste better. I’ll need to experiment with some herbs and/or spices. I did come across at least one salsa canning recipe that called for the use of oregano, so I’ll try that in addition to researching other possible seasoning candidates.

I did use a 1/4 tsp of hing (asafoetida) in the salsa. I thought the hing might make up, at least somewhat, for the lack of garlic and onion in the salsa. However, I’m not sure it added much, if any, flavor to the salsa.

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Post header image courtesy of reynaldoac on Pixabay.

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