Apple Butter, Part III and done!

Well it is that time of year, you know the one where I find myself grumbling "how does the rest of the world not find 'Baby, Its Cold Outside' creepy as hell?!" while avoiding public in general.

Also known as the Christmas season.  Humbug.

But I wanted to wrap up those apple butter gifts I started a while back for the Meatball's teachers, so I did my best to be both crafty and festive.  A girl can pretend!

I had to get some smaller jars, mine were 16 to 24 oz and I really didn't want to give each teacher that much, so I got 8 oz jars and set the bigger ones in the sink to thaw.

I was impatient, shocker, and added some warm water to the sink which made the bottom pop off of one of my big jars.  That sucked.

The Beans happily stood on a chair next to me the whole time, spoon in hand, reminding me that I could "put it in the Beansies bowl!" because he adores the crud out of apple butter now.  He was quite horrified by my telling him we were *gasp* giving it all away.

I made little cards on the computer.  I found the chalkboard tags here, and just used Microsoft Word to insert some Word Art in white and made labels for it.

Cut those out, without losing a finger.  Yay me!

Made them little hemp thread loops on top.

Tied them on to the final product after Meatball wrote names on the backs.

Poof, done.

Too bad the rest of my Christmas shopping is going to be no where near this easy!

Check me out, it is FALL and I rock

Apples, before I brutally slaughtered them into
a delicious dessert.

Have you ever heard of apple butter?  I sure hadn't.  Prior to the Beans destroying all that is good about dessert by developing allergies to the worlds greatest food combo -- peanut butter and chocolate -- I had no reason to branch out.  Then he ruined everything and I had all but given up on anything good, sweet and fattening.  Oddly enough I wasn't loosing any weight, a fact I can't explain and which is entirely off topic ...

But, then came apple butter.

Its like applesauce, but not at all good for you and way creamier.

My parents wound up buying a place with a ton of apple trees, so we needed to use them ... my kitchen (and waistline) will never be the same.

In the interest of complete transparency -- it is time consuming and messy as heck, but it is easy.  Slap on a good podcast, movie, or some music and go to town!

You can search Pintercrack for much more thorough or serious sounding recipes.  Or you can hang out here.
 

Me picking the apples.
I should have Linda Hamilton Terminator arms by now.

I started by mixing cheap wine and Sprite.  No, seriously.  It doesn't actually go into the apple butter, but I find that it makes the process more enjoyable.  Why mix?  Because I will be singing show tunes before the apples are even halfway done if I drink the cheap wine straight.  I am not much of a sipper, more of a gulper.

So I mixed my Mommy Juice, snapped my iPod in because I could hear Handy (with his whiny assed tools) Manny in the background still.  And got to work.

My apples are small, and the skin is really thin so I don't peal them.  If you are getting store bought apples you may need to peel them and won't need as many because they are probably bigger.  Don't get horribly hung up on what kind of apples to use because by the time you are done cooking them with all the spices they will all be delicious.  Just know that if you want tang, pick a tangier apple, tart or sweet same deal.

For this round of apple butter I am using ... well, I am not entirely sure what kind of apples they are.  Here is a visual of the four main "types" but I think one and four may be the same kind:

I have googled them and come up with a couple different names, but I would love to hear what you think they are.

Now to the actual instructions.  Brace yourself for my thorough, foodie level instruction giving skillz:

Step one: Wash the bird shit and bug shit off.  Seriously, why they gotta poo on my food?

Step Two: Core and slice the muthahs.  And since my apple core-er sucks, I do this with a knife.

*insert possible brief intermission for ER visit here*

Step Three: Re-fill your drink, undoubtedly it is time.  Then toss the slices of apples into your food processor.  Process until they are in small chunks, smaller they are the faster they cook.

Step Four: Dump the chunky, wet apple matter into the CrockPot.

Blurry pictures happen when someone's hands are slippery.

Step Five: Spices.  Don't ask me to measure, I don't really do that and I am already a full drink in (my cup is 32 oz) by this point so my already low standards are dipping.  I eyeball it.  If I had to guess, for a full pot I use at least a full cup of brown sugar and then coat the top of the apples with cinnamon and allspice (so like 2 to 3 teaspoons each).  Here, I offer pictures to those of you who know what you are doing ...

It is a lot more spices than I have ever seen in another recipe, but to be honest I have never heard anyone complain LOL

Step Six: Set your Crock Pot on long and low.  For mine this is the 8 hour setting.  I try to do this as early in the morning as possible because you really do want the apples cooking for 8 to ten hours.  It makes for creamier apple butter in the end.

Step Seven: Try to not eat it through out the day and feel very Martha Stewart-ey because your house smells like fall and you seem to know what you are doing.  Stir occasionally, but really, you don't want to do much.

Step Eight: When the apples are plenty squishy, start shoveling them into a blender, food processor, or be uber fancy and have an immersion blender.  I know it is a huge surprise, but I am not uber fancy and lack an immersion blender.  I blend this bad boy until it gets creamy.

Once we have blended the snot out of the apples, we are technically done.  You can eat it straight, mix it in something, jar it, or even ice cube it like this:

I do that because then the Meatball can drop an apple cube in his oatmeal and it both flavors AND cools it.

I know, you are in awe of my general bad ass glory here, aren't you?

Anyway, it does freeze well, so jar it up and store it for later so you can have apple butter year round.  One full CrockPot made 6 full pint jars.

In a few weeks I will be cute-i-fying the jars somehow in order to give them away, so I will share that later.

Cheers!

Halloween & Food Allergies

Food allergies suck.  No two ways about it, allergies in general suck.  It was really easy to get totally overwhelmed in the beginning with the Beans' diagnoses, and my own for that matter, to just be like "dude, we ain't goin' anywhere!" because the world is impossible to control.  When it is you, when you could die because of something that is invisible and common to everyone else, that totally stinks.

When it is your kid?  Man, I have no words to adequately explain it.

But it is critical to Bunyan and I that we teach Beans and Meatball (who has food sensitivities, though not allergies) how to navigate the world independently.

Then holidays like Halloween come along and its like someone punted you between the legs.

Too graphic?

Okay, how bout this, Halloween comes along and just fucks it all up?  No, still too strong?  Well my point is that we have a lot of food related holidays and celebrations in our society and it really does a number on my "don't want to face it!" head-in-the-sand wishes.

We navigated Easter, but Halloween is a doozey.

Or is it?

I was so anxious leading up to Halloween ... and I am not sure why exactly.  Maybe this year was just stupidly easy and I got lucky?

We did not buy any candy.  That was the first relief.  It sucked too, because it meant I had none to steal, but I supposed that may be a blessing in disguise.

Since we weren't handing out candy, I hit the dollar store for these bad boys:

Glow bracelets!  Seriously, we were quite the popular house!  No one was like "where's the candy?" Everyone, parents AND kids alike, loved the glow bracelets.

Meatball also dressed up as a haphazard scarecrow and scared the crap out of soccer moms who were escorting their kids.

Seriously, he scared more parents than he did children.

But that brings me to the second awesome point -- we didn't take anyone trick or treating this year.  Meatball was old enough to like scaring people and Beans has no idea it is even an option.

So I lucked out there, but I already have some planning in for next year if my luck runs out by then.  Since Meatball knew he was being denied candy overall, I promised him an exchange.  Net year we will actually swap any candy that is obtained if either kid trick or treats with a toy or small gift of some kind.  This year both boys picked Legos and were plenty happy with that.

Also, I plan to make use of this if we get candy and need to offload it in a good way.  How cool is that, our house stays safe and troops get some goodies?  Deal!

Overall, I think I am still new enough to the allergy world to panic when events crop up.  The holidays are a real witch to deal with, but for every frustrating situation I encounter there are another 10 supportive people who want to help and accommodate us if possible.  If I could tell the panicky me taht was convinced my child would be doomed to rice cakes and celery for life anything, I would certainly start with "chill, it will be okay.  Normal is relative, you will discover a new normal."

Our "normal" is glow bracelets and that just isn't so terrible.

I heart easy gifts a latte

I love this time of year.

Not.

I am a total stressed out humbug this time of year, but generally when you tell people that they look at you like you just said you drink kitty blood.  While I don't think it is quite on par with that, I do get that for some people the Santa cutesy aspect of this time of year is something they spend a lot of time and energy on looking forward to.  Myself, I don't completely get it, but I am trying.

I do, however, like letting people know you love, cherish, appreciate them.  Don't want to seem overly tacky by ignoring them.  Or, you know, whatever.

Whilst we cannot call them "Christmas" gifts, we can call them Before-You-Go-On-Winter-Break-and-Happy-New-Year-gifts, I do like to make sure we give something to the teachers in our lives around now.  It is a nice gesture, and I do like being nice.  Mostly.  Sometimes.

Okay I will stop assassination my own character long enough to just share!

I already showed you how to glue your hair and rip the skin off your hand, AKA: make homemade hand scrub in cutesy little jars.  Meatball's teachers got one of those, but I wanted to give them something else.  After all, they follow me on Pintercrack so there is a good possibility they will realize this "gift made with love" is nothing but sugar and dish soap. 

So I put this together:

Not the best picture, and yes they are sitting on  a dog kennel, but seriously they are cute once you get past all that!

I made the tags on the computer, cut them out so that if could fold like a card:

Then I made a little slot across the top of one side of the card so that the gift card I had picked up from Starbucks would slide in.

I always say that Starbucks gift cards a a good call even when you aren't sure your teacher is a coffee drinker.  Three reasons:

1.) Odds are if you teach, you consume caffeine in some form.
2.) Starbucks does have things other than coffee, one of my former colleagues saved hers throughout the year and spoiled herself all wither with hot chocolates.
3.) Like sending cigarettes to people in prison, Starbucks gift cards are a valuable trade commodity   Its like currency, and the re-gift potential is high and always appreciated 

Back to the point now ...

Starbucks card in there, now glue everywhere the card doesn't sit so it seals and makes a nice little pocket for the card to rest in.

Ta da!  Now tie it on the the bag with the homemade pomegranate scrub and boom!  You have yourself a cute gift!

The picture quality is quite terrible, for that I do apologize.  Just trust me, they were really cute!  Since it says nothing about winter, or Christmas I can totally re-print these bad boys and use 'em again with no problem!  If I knew how to share the file, I would.

mod podge, hair "gel," and cheapo x-mas gifts

Sometimes even I can be amazed at my own ability to be overly confident.  For Christmas this year I decided that somehow I was capable of not only being crafty, but sewing.  I don't know what the hell I was thinking with the sewing part, but that is a separate post that I will probably drink my way through writing ... and sewing, I think it may improve my odds.

This post?  Well I thought this would be easy, after all I have done this stuff before.

Remember my easy yet cheap gift for my mother?  This one?

Yeah, all of two ingredients, Dawn dish soap and sugar, and you have a pretty scrub.  I foolishly signed on to make about a million of them for a baby shower  which was adorable by the way.  Here is a picture of the blue version since the mama-to-be was baking a baby boy in her oven:

So by the time December rolls around I am like a scrub-making-bad-ass.  Done it a few times, can't possibly screw it up.  Right? HA!

I made the scrub without a problem, because honestly it is that easy.  But then I looked at that jar and I thought to myself "Self, I don't have any more cute spoons.  I need a pretty label!"  So I sat down and I made these.

So far so good, ultimately.  I am not a thousand percent pleased with the label but I needed to glue those babies on and get my jars drying because some of my presents were getting mailed and I needed to get on that.  So out comes the Mod Podge and in comes all those opportunities to screw stuff up.

How to Eff Up EASY Christmas Gifts in Twelve Simple Steps:

Step One: Gather your supplies.  This should be easy, make your scrub following the directions found here, and pour into the jars of your choice.

Then grab Mod Podge, and something to paint it on with.  Side note: If you are going to use a really cheap brush you happen to have and intend to just throw away when you are done please note the odd pricking sense of foreboding you have because the brush is about to be your downfall.

Step Two: Nearly rip all the skin on your hands off trying to open the murther fracking Mod Podge that has sealed itself within the bottle.

Step Three: Put some Mod Podge on the top of the jar.

Step Four: Put one of your labels on top of the Mod Podge.

Step Five: Start putting Mod Podge on top of the label.  This is when shit starts going wrong.

Step Six: Realize that the ink from your printer is smearing and you need to use fewer brush strokes.

Step Seven: Realize that your cheap assed brush is shedding hairs into your pretty Mod Podged labels.  Try to pick it out and swear at it without smearing additional ink around.

Step Eight: Run your hands through your hair in frustration and realize you just Mod Podged your hair into a pony tail.  There is no picture accompanying this damn step.

Step Nine: Realize that you might have just Mod Podged the goshdamn lids and/or rings on to the jars and remove/wipe as necessary.

Step Ten: Add another layer of Mod Podge while still picking out hairs from the brush and feeling your own hair solidify.

Step Eleven: DO NOT TOUCH THEM.  Just leave them alone, you have done enough damage, let them dry.

Step Twelve: Remember to put a hat on before answering the door for the FedEx guy because you haven't had time to take a shower so you still look suspiciously like a scene from Something About Mary.

So with all this success rolling around the house I decided today is not the day to attempt sewing, something I cannot do well at on a good day.  I figure when I need to chisel my hair we can safely assume this is not a "good day."

There is the finished, not wrapped product.  Not quite as cute as I pictured, but at least no one knows what I was aiming for.  Without that mental image to compare it too I think they work just fine.