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!

beards

"Its my Daddy and my Gramps!"

That is what the Beans had to say upon seeing this.

Now my dad has always had a beard, as far back as I remember, and Paul Bunyan has had some variation on facial hair since the day we met.  However, recently it has been a bit like a ZZTop concert round here.

Dad was growing his for the Red Sox, which I have NO grudge against because I again wept as my team made it three in my life time and won the Series.  But my husband, no matter how hard I tried to lie to myself and say it was for Boston, was not growing his beard for Papi and crew.

No, he just really is embracing the whole Paul Bunyan redneck thing.

He thinks Duck Dynasty is hilarious.  I watched it the first time and had an epiphany ... my husband is Jase.

Don't get me wrong, there are worse things, by far to be married to.  When Bunyan ain't looking, I laugh at and even with Jase, I don't particularly mind him.  But it is part of our loving banter for me to be annoyed.  There are definitely limits to my acceptance.  Like camo "bibs" on an adult man, that would be one big merther fracken limit of mine.  But the beard was okay ... it was getting a little, um, shall we say, unruly though and I might have suggested he trim it or something.

Well, I wasn't trying to be funny!  I was merely suggesting that you trim it up a little, because, well, it won't hurt you to ...

That isn't true, there are men who don't have beards, but I wasn't suggesting that you have NO beard, just maybe LESS beard ...

Well that isn't constructive at all.  I was just saying that maybe a little trim would be a good thing.  

I could go on with fake meme replies.  There are no shortage of Jase-isms that sound particularly Bunyan-like.  Many of which I agree with.

Some I find alarmingly close to the mentality he has sometimes.

Bunyan's beard isn't that long yet, but I think that is the end goal in mind and he is getting close.  He mentioned the other day that he may need beard wax or something like that, to help "control" it.  

Uh, I am not even sure what to say to THAT.

All things considered, there are worse things my husband could decide to do in order to annoy me or assert himself on.  While he may be a pain in the butt sometimes, he is my soul mate and partner in crime.  Besides, while I leave you with a quote from the "wrong" Robertson brother, we have similar parenting philosophies ...

LOL on that note, I bid you a farewell for today!

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.

bladder capacity & toy baths

I may not be a real scientist, but I play one on the internet.  Hello, I am a "rocket surgeon" y'all!  So being all scientific-ey the other day I realized I can visually represent the Beans' bladder capacity for you visually.

Before we get to that, have you seen this?

Or hows abouts this?

So true.  So very, very true.  In my case, the Beans did not actually escape his prison, he just decided to punish me for putting him in it.  I should have been alerted by the sudden silence.  I should have, but I wasn't observant enough.

Now to the scientific bladder capacity part -- just how much pee can a two and a half year old's bladder hold?

Enough to contaminate all of this when he puts his mind to it.

To be fair and maintain scientific transparency, there was smearing action before I realized what was happening.

Of course, my giving his toys a bath was so cool, so he naturally added more to it.  Dumped a whole bucket of Duplos before I could stop the little monstrosity.

This is totally the crap that should be in parentage books, but is strangely absent ...

So, laundry detergent, eh?

I was on a roll, I was feeling good, I knew failure was imminent!

But not today, or so I told myself!

As I was busily making my Ghetto Wipes and cleaning fluid I was also chatting with friends on the interwebz doing serious research.  In a facebook group of totally awesome people, many of whom far more skilled than I clearly, a recipe for laundry detergent surfaced.  The idea was born and I was obsessed.

I compared notes with about a million other recipes on Pintercrack.  I wanted a liquid and not a powder, and wound up doing one similar to this.  It is apparently the Duggar's recipe, but mine had slightly different ratios and made less than this one but I am not complaining.  Since it was a recipe shared by someone who makes this to sell it, I am not sharing the exact thing here -- not like I have such huge traffic it would matter but not risking it anyhoo!

So the ingredients are simple ... water, Fels-Naptha soap (or any bar soap apparently), Borax, and Washing Soda.  I made a quick Walmart run for the bar soap, the bucket (cheaper BTW at Home Depot or Lowes, NOT at Wally World go figure), and the washing soda.

Start by grating the bar of soap with a cheese grater.  Try to not be totally appalled at how much it looks like cheese.

Boil 4 cups of water and add the washing soda and borax to it (see, different steps than the Duggar one!) and once it is mixed around a bit add the cheesy soap bits.  I was trying to be really patient and get it to dissolve, but it was only mostly dissolved by the time I gave up and moved on.

I filled my big assed expensive bucket (it was like $5 instead of $3 at the hardware store LOL) with about 3.5 gallons of water by using an empty and rinsed out apple juice bottle.

While doing this step the Beans mocked my superior parenting skills by breaking into a room with a baby proof knob cover that *I* can barely use but he can remove.  Threw it into the bucket of water for good measure to let me know what he really thinks of my attempts to keep him out of my bedroom.

I then dumped that yellowish mixture into the bucket, clapped the lid on and let it sit for 24 hours.

The next day a hard film about a quarter inch thick had formed on the top and I tried to break it up.

Then the messy began.

I had an empty giant Costco-brand-of-Tide bottle and a couple big containers from the dollar store.  No matter how careful I was about it, I wound up smelling very very clean by the time I was done.

End result, we have been using it for a bit and I love it!  I use a full cup that came with the "Tide" of it for a wash load, because I read that somewhere... now that I think about it I may try less and see how that works.

What I Have will last a while.  I do have to occasionally shake the bottle because the chunks settle into the bottom and pug the sucker up.

So while I am not giving you a full how-to here, this should serve as a lesson.  I appear to not have caused any permanent damage to anything and am still off of all the government big brother watch lists (that I know of or wouldn't be on already LOL) ... so you can totally do this too!

So no massive failure yet ... the streak continues and I am not sure what I will do next!

Ghetto Wipes

So immediately following the making of my Ghetto All Purpose Cleaner I started butchering a roll of paper towels to make wipes because it appeals greatly to my inner lazy biotch to just have that around.

But let us start at the beginning.

I am a teaching supply hoarder.  Whether it is Sharpies or random containers that I insist on keeping while my husband rolls his eyes and tells me I am nuts, I just cannot help myself.  It is a compulsion.  One that behooves us more than my husband will EVER admit.

Point is, every time he goes through the garage and asks me "can I please throw this out now?!" I find a use for something that saves us money.

So the cylindrical cleaning wipes containers I insisted on keeping because YOU NEVER KNOW wound up being not only insanely useful but also part of saving us money!  Take that Bunyan!

I had my Ghetto All Purpose Cleaner ready to go, so I just needed the container and the "wipes."

This is where it gets messy.

First off, I had a roll of paper towels that are select a size, and I really thought I would like that.  I was wrong.  I may be getting ahead of myself here in reviewing my "product" before I tell ya how to make it, but in case you don't read the whole thing and try to walk in my footsteps (are you mad?) let me tell you now -- your wipes will be tiny!  Do not use the select a size towels if you use a dispenser like I am unless you want tiny wipes.  How tiny you ask?  Let me show you:

So I would prefer, and will do this next time because it is the only complaint I have at present, to use the full sized towels.

Reason being, step one with the paper towels is to cut them in half.  The whole damn roll.  Have you ever tried to cut a roll of paper towels in half?

It is a messy process.

Really.

I couldn't fit a whole roll of paper towels in the containers because they are just a bit too narrow, so I had to set some aside.  I did have the sense to do that before I cut the roll in half at least.

After sawing the roll in half and making your work space look like a blizzard hit, you have to wiggle the cardboard roll out of the center.  This is a lot easier than I figured it would be.  Then squeeze the roll into the container and pour the fluid mixture on it.

Seriously, that simple.

Now I had to clean the front bathroom, the one the boys all use.  I did not take a before picture, frankly who wants to see that?  But the after picture?  Seriously, my toilet was sparkling like a moody vampire on a sunny day!

Did you "ooooo" and "aaaaaa" because you should.

Again, like I said in the last post about making the cleaner, it was not like I was scrubbing obsessively.  It was no more work than a usual cleaner.  I did have to wipe the space dry, so I had one hand with a wet wipe and one with a dry one.  I also can't do a cost break down because again I had to purchase none of this that day, but I am sure it comes out exceptionally cheap when you really figure it out.

Feeling pretty in control of things I set my sites on a bigger battle because something else was running low and I would need to buy more soon ... laundry detergent ... oh yeah.  Stay tuned.

I am on a roll here, maybe I should change the blog up to be about practical cleaning tips ... something like ...

Seems legit.