Luna's Baublebilities

Halloween is approaching and I'm getting a little scared.  Not of ghosts and goblins but of candies made on equipment that processes tree nuts. 

My Maxx has severe nut allergies.  He can eat Peanuts but walnuts really set him off and we have been advised to avoid all tree nuts.  He has a painful, terrifying reaction that includes intense pain in his mouth and stomach and sudden swelling of his mucosa, lips, face and throat.  We suspect that last summer's almost deadly asthma attack may heve been exacerbated by his eating a bunch of chocolate animal crackers the day before that had been made in a facility that also processed tree nuts.  I didn't know that when I fed them to him - In the past I have just picked up food and made some assumptions about safety and ingredients but since the asthma attack, I've been a lot more careful. 

Maxx has also been very careful since eating a cookie at gramma's a few months ago that had some walnuts in them - reactions are so painful and terrifying for him that he now asks whether or not there are nuts in Apple Juice, for crying out loud!  Now that he is in Kindergarten and as Halloween approaches, I'm becoming more and more conerned about the safety of what he puts in his mouth.


(This incredibly yummy chocolate bar with pop rocks, sea salt and chipotle pepper is Not safe for Maxx to eat.)

Friday, Molly and I had to go to a doctor's appointment, we did some shopping in Malone before coming home and picked up a bag of Brach's Candy Corn as it is a favorite for Molly, Maxx and Old Beorn.   Maxx saw the bag when he got home and happily brought it to me asking "Are there any nuts in this?"  I said "Oh, I don't think so, you can probably eat some."  he said "You better read it."  So I read it and there it was - produced in a facility that also prcesses tree nuts.  What the heck?  Tree nuts in Candy Corn?? What is the world coming to?  Maxx wept bitterly and said "I hate those people who put nuts in all the good candy!"

I hate them too.

(Hershey's chocolate chips are Fine.)

We found a recipe for homemade candy corn Without Tree Nuts that we will probably make tonight for Family Home Evening so the candy corn problem is solved.   But what about all those people out there who don't have to worry about tree nuts and are gearing up for Halloween with candy and treats that they want to give to my kid and others who may have tree nut allergies?

Even Rice Krispie treats may not be safe!  Brand name Rice Krispies are fine.  The Walmart generic version are made in a facility that processes pecans. 

Is that really a big deal?  I mean how much of the nut is he going to get from a bunch of machinery that was probably washed before the ceareal was made on it? 

Maybe none - maybe enough to kill him.  Several months ago I made a lentil curry dish and used my mortar and pestle to grind up the coriander seeds.  The last time I had used it - about 8 months previous - I had ground up a few walnuts for a sauce for us non-nut allergic people to enjoy.  I thought I had washed it well but Maxx took one bite of curry and his mouth & stomach started to burn, he had diarreah and I thought I was going to have to use the epi-pen for the first time.  Needless to say - the equiment got washed again with Bleach and scrubbed several times before returning to the shelf.  Never again will I grind walnuts unless I can develop a nut safe grinding place and practice in order to keep those oils away from my kid!

I decided this morning that I need to take Molly on a field trip to the candy aisle and she and I need to pre-screen all of the varieties out there to see what is sae and what isn't.  A daunting task for sure but next time he comes to me with a candy, I want to know that I'm giving him a safe answer.  I'd also like to provide his teacher, school nurse and other parents ofkids in his class a list of what is safe and what isn't.  The last thing any of us want is for Maxx to have a scary ride to the hospital in the rescue squad vehicle after being epi-pened by the school nurse.  GAH!  I would never get him to go to school again.

It is official. Autumn is here. Soon the greeny greens will be gone. No longer will a floaty silk scarf keep your bare shoulders comfy of an evening. The nights are cold - not just cool - we have had at least two hard frosts here in Almost Canada and actually had to build a fire last night. Last night Bry and I went for a walk and I was wishing for a pair of long underwear even though we kept up a pretty brick pace! Even Ziggy was happy to get back into the house and warm up afterward.

I have a love-hate relationship with Autumn. It is one of the most beautiful seasons of the year here with glorious colors in the foliage and dramatic skies. The bugs all die in the first frost and the days are still bright and sunny. Clear nights allow for an amazing view of the sky without the bitter cold of winter. Harvest starts to come in, including Beets and squash and this year, purple potatoes! The first payroll check of the year shows up mid September and we can afford to buy tissues again.

However it is also the time of year that Bry has to go back to work and I hate that. I wish I could keep him home all year long. I hear that lots of married couples get tired of each other during vacations. Hasn't happened to us yet. Of course, I love having the Daddy around to take some of the demands of childrearing but the main thing is that we still love to talk and listen to music and work and play together. The fact that we can't get outside together during this beautiful time of year is particularly galling.

This year has it's own stresses associated with Autumn. Bry has had to take a half-time position with BOCES because the other available offer was just not reasonable for our family. He probably could have pulled rank with his seniority and kicked some other teacher out of a position they were comfortable in but neither of us felt that was an appropriate response to our situation. Make someone else miserable, too? Not likely.

So that first paycheck of the year was pretty pitiful. In fact, I believe that we now qualify for food stamps! I am currently lamenting my month spent recovering from whiplash (thanks, Maxx) which allowed the garden to get out of control and significantly reduced our yield. However, I'm not panicking about money. Bry is scheduled to start tearing down a barn on Friday and he should be able to re-sell and/or re-use some of that lumber. He and his brothers are talking about starting a guide service in the spring and GoblinsMarket is growing at a pace I'm comfortable with. It is not bringing in a lot right now but it is paying the credit cards and meeting its own needs financially. Studio Tour and Holidays are coming and that always bings in steady trickle of comission payments through February. In spite of the fact that our family is systematically being weaned away from a steady, regular paycheck, I feel pretty confident about our ability to get by.

My creative goals for this autumn are to
- get ready for holiday sales by producing many more scarves than I have in previous years - don't have a real number yet.
- make christmas gifts for the family
- start a line of holiday ornaments for Luna's Baublebilities for the local markets.
- get vintage style earrings and pendants into ForArtSake in Malone
- bring in new filigree findings at GoblinsMarket
- get silk fusion kits and hand dyed fabric up at GoblinsMarket
- help get the insulation in and the wall board up, window casings stripped and re-installed so we can stay warmer
- Give LunasBaublebilities Etsy a bit more attention, especially with scarves, so that it can be successful, also
- Finish participating in the Take it Further challenges this year
- get studio cleaned so that I can do some real silk painting some days when Maxxis off at Pre-K. I miss silk painting!


I could go on, but that is probably more than I can actually handle! Now - Off to get some of those things done!

Oh - and here is my favorite Pickled Beets recipe:

7# beets
4 cups vinegar (I use white)
1/4 cup pickling salt
2 cups sugar
2 cups water
2 cinnamon sticks
12 Allspice seeds (I hate cloves)
4-6 onions

Trim the beet tops, leaving 1" of roots and stems to prevent color loss, wash and cook until tender. Cool.

Trim off roots and stems, slip skins off and slice into 1/4 inch slices. Slice onions to similar size.

Put spices in a bag and mix in large pot with vinegar, salt, sugar and water. Boil. Add beets and onions, simmer 5 minutes. remove spice bag. Pack beets and onions in cans, leaving 1/2" of head space. Process in boiling water bath for 30 minutes.

Yum, yum. These make excellent tangy treats during the long dim. Bry particularly likes to have them with tuna noodle casserole.

Just a few quick photos to show off all of our hard work. We finally finished the Crab Apples on Wednesday last week, giving me exactly one day to get ready for the Asgaard Farms Art show and sale during the Music Heard Up North Concert.

Maxx was way into turning the crank for mashing the apples into sauce, though Molly wasn't really keen on that particular division of labor. She did most of the real mashing, allowing Maxx to participate only when things were pretty much done.

















We finished pickled apples on Tuesday and made sauce and jelly on Wednesday.













Apparently the sauce is REALLY good.




















The jelly is good on a PB&J sandwich or toast with butter. Tangy and just the right amount of sweet. Everyone wants me to make more but I've got people trying to give away cukes right now and everyone will want pickles, too so I'm saying enough is enough with the teeny apples. We will pick some big, wild apples this fall and make sauce with those because Maxx can eat applesauce 'till the cows come home.

Still processing crab apples . . . . . .

Every year I start something like this and ask myself why. I have aton of work to do in both my shops, a craft fair to preparefor and holiday season fast approaching but I just can't seem to leave food alone. There is something about taking those finished jars out of the canner, lining them up on the table and waiting for the little "ping" that just warms my heart. My husband's appreciation for all manner of pickled and preserved vegetables and fruits add something to the appeal, as well. This time, the distraction was my brother's fault.

Nate called me out of the blue on Saturday and asked if I knew anyone who made Crab Apple Jelly. He said the tree in his yard was so loaded with little apples, he was afraid it was going to start losing limbs, did I want any. I said I would come and get some on Sunday afternoon and immediately went to get grandma's old Ball canning cookbook.

Silly me.

We spent 3 hours pulling little apples off that tree, which really was loaded. I've never seen so much fruit on a single plant before. It has been a great growing year - lots of sun and rain. I'm really grateful for that because it was nice way to spend some time with my brother. We rarely see each other because he works weird hours and our interests are completely different. He's a NASCAR and sports man, I play with beads and like role-playing/culture building games. It would be hard to play Settlers of Catan while watching the races, I think. Working with him brought back memories of stacking wood together down in the basement when we were kids. He is 6 years younger than me but was able to stack a stable row much faster. It must be a guy thing.

Anyway, I ended up bringing home 2 and 1/2 huge reuseable grocery/tote sacks full. Maxx and I washed them all this afternoon and now my kitchen table is piled right full of them. I thought I would give my back a rest and share some photos and a recipe before I get back to work on them. As you will see, Maxx petered out before everything was done.

The recipe I will use is from my grandma's Ball canning recipe book. I borrowed it sometime after she had her stroke and never returned it, which is good because it would have either been pillaged or burned by my plundering cousins. It is one of the few things my mom and I were able to salvage and to me it is a true treasure. I do not know its year of publication because the cover is missing but it does have color photos and the last page before the index states "Government regulations based on rubber and metal shortages prohibit the manufacture of the complete BALL line during the war, but There Will Always be a Ball Jar suitable for all methods of home canning."



Here's the recipe:
(text and directions altered to suit new language use and canning recommendations, ingredients list and preparation info remain the same.)

Crab Apple Pickle
1 gallon crab apples
6 - 8 cups sugar (depending on how sweet you want them)
3 cups water
4 cups vinegar
1 stick cinnamon
1 TBSP crushed ginger
1 TBSP whole Allspice
1/2 TBSP whole cloves

(I will be leaving out the cloves because both Molly Bryn and I have a strange reaction to cloves - we get sore throats that lasts for days within minutes of eating something spiced with cloves . A real bummer at Christmas Eve when everyone else is drinking Wassail.)

Wash and pierce each apple with a needle. Heat sugar, liquids and spices (tied in a bag) until sugar dissolves. Cool. Add apples and simmer until tender. Let stand for several hours or overnight. Pack cold apples into hot jars. Boil the sirup to the desired thickness and pour over the apples.

Since we live in an era of super bugs and wimpier intestinal tracts, I will be processing my quart jars for 20 minutes in a boiling water canner. Pint jars could be processed for 15 minutes and be safe. You can read more info about processing times at bellaonline. If you are unfamiliar with the process of canning food, you can open a PDF titled Let's Preserve, Caning Basics from U of Nebraska here.

So - off I go to make some dinner and pickle some crab apples. Tomorrow after the pickled ones have been processes, I will make Crab Apple Butter with the enormous amount of apples left over. I'll report back in a day or two to let you know how it goes.

















I hope Maxx wakes up before bedtime!