I Am A Red Assed Buffoon

WARNING: THERE IS SO MUCH OVERSHARING GOING ON IN THIS POST!

I readily admit I am a product junkie. I love to try new beauty products. Give me new make-up, serums, shampoos, hair products, or the latest bath product trends, and I will be like a kid in a candy store. Don't get me wrong, I am discerning about the products I try. There are big stores and big brands that are the equivalent of dirty words in my world. Bath and Body Works, Dove, or gasp, Irish Spring, you might as well use the "C" word as speak to me about your use of these products. By the way, using the "C" word is the ultimate swear in my world. Depending on the audience, I will sling the "F" word around like it's nobody's business, but using the "C" word is saved for extreme provocation and rarely happens. Now, back to my story.

I don't know if you know about the latest body care trend, but whipped tallow is all the rage online—every time I scroll through Pinterest or Instagram, an influencer raves about its benefits. I was intrigued but not interested enough to purchase the product they were pushing. Then, a kind, talented, and reputable maker gifted me a jar of whipped tallow moisturizer. The only ingredient was grass-fed beef tallow.

Well, dear reader, I can only say that I did not follow my own advice. I always advise people new to our products or any products to do a spot test before slathering their bodies in them. I should have heeded my sage advice. I showered and did my daily hygiene routine. When I stepped out of the shower, I grabbed the jar of tallow and proceeded to slather myself in beef fat. Sigh.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. I smelled like a Sunday pot roast. The second thing I noticed was the greasy consistency that did not absorb quickly into my skin. Those things can be expected when slathering oneself in beef fat, common sense, right? Ha! I cannot preach about common sense because I lack it. I put the tallow everywhere, and when I say everywhere, dear reader, I mean EVERYWHERE.

So, yes, I'm oversharing; please stop reading if you are easily offended. However, I will press on. My now saggy, draggy, granny bottom cheeks get dry in the winter. I slather our goat's milk moisturizer onto my bottom cheeks every day without issue. I did not think about covering myself with a single ingredient of beef tallow. I simply did what I do every day: I moisturized my bottom.

Let's just say I did not respond well to whipped beef tallow. After an hour or so, I noticed my legs, arms, and, yes, bottom were abnormally itchy. I scratched at them. The Bibbed Wonder informed me I looked like a primate digging its a$$. It did not occur to me that I was reacting to the beef tallow. I dug my arms and legs raw in a matter of minutes. When I used the restroom, the first thing I noticed was the very beefy smell coming from my body. Then, I discovered the mother of all diaper rashes on my saggy, draggy, granny butt.

Have you ever tried looking at your bottom in a mirror, dear reader? I was standing in front of a full-length mirror, with my pants around my ankles, trying to angle a hand mirror so I could see what was happening to my nether regions. It was not a pretty sight. However, I got the right angle and saw my poor bottom. Have you ever seen a red-assed baboon? Yeah, that was my butt. Red, swollen, angry, and oh, so very itchy! I actually gasped when I saw myself.

I immediately got in the shower and washed off the tallow. However, it was too late, and the damage was done. I had angry red scratches up and down my arms and legs. My poor butt was a red, swollen mess and painful to the touch. I decided putting Calmaseptine on my diaper rash was a sensible solution. Wrong! Calmaseptine has a mild menthol tingle to it when used on healthy skin. It is like setting oneself on fire when you have the mother of all diaper rash on your bottom. Then, it gets warm and melts. It travels south to your bottom's more delicate neighbor when it melts. That led to a wiggly dance and yet another shower. Sigh.

It has been four days, and I continue to suffer from my reaction to beef tallow. My skin is a mess. I am using our unscented soaps and moisturizer to calm my angry skin. The rash is clearing; I am not as itchy, but the scratches I inflicted upon myself continue to be angry and sore. Take it from a red-assed buffoon, do a spot test before you cover yourself in anything, even if it is only one ingredient. As my parents used to say, "Do as I say, not as I do."

I am not trying to deter you from using beef tallow if that is your thing. However, I encourage you to proceed cautiously and do a spot test before covering yourself in anything. Lesson learned. I will stick to my soap and moisturizer, which I know I don't react to. I may be mildly biased, but I like how my products make my skin feel. I also like not being compared to a red-assed baboon every time my husband sees me naked.

On this mild December day, stay safe, be smart, don't cover yourself in a new product from head to toe, use common sense, do a spot test, and keep washing your hands...and all your parts if you have an allergic reaction.

The vibe for the day

Foodie Friday: Old-Fashioned Applesauce Cookies

When I think of Christmas cookies, I think of the cookies my family made with my Grandma Haney. My Grandma Haney was my mom's mom. Of our grandparents, we spent most of our time with Grandma Haney. Grandma Haney moved in with our family when I was eight. My parents put a small efficiency apartment in one half of our basement, and my Gram and Pop spent six to eight months of the year in Pennsylvania with us. It was nice to have my Gram that close.

A few weeks before Christmas, my Grandma, mom, sister, and I would spend a day baking our favorite holiday treats. It was a busy day, but it was fun. My favorite holiday cookies were of the spiced variety. I enjoy soft molasses cookies, ginger snaps, and applesauce cookies. I am among the few weird individuals who love raisins in my cookies and cinnamon rolls. Making apple sauce cookies using my Grandma's Grange Cookbook was my favorite to mix up and bake. I believe I ate more batter than actual cookies.

My Gram had an old Grange Cookbook from the 1930s, from which many of our favorite recipes came. The cookbook had a cream-colored cover with red and black writing and a red spiral binding. I'm unsure what happened to my Gram's cookbook, but I picked up a copy of the same book from an antique store several years ago. Sitting and reading through the recipes was like being transported back to my childhood.

While perusing the recipes, I had a picture in my mind's eye of old women wearing cotton house dresses with snaps down the front in loud floral patterns or polyester "slacks" in bright pastels, dark-rimmed glasses, and overly styled hair with lots of volume and accentuated curls created by roller sets. These women smelled of talcum powder with a bouquet of floral scents: rose, gardenia, violet, and lily of the valley. In soft voices, they offered firm instructions on how to mix, fold, and roll the cookie dough correctly.

When reading the recipes, one sees words that are no longer or rarely used in cooking modern meals. Words like oleo, lard, chicken fat, mince meat, and jell-0 are the norm. These recipes take us back to a simpler time when people performed more manual labor in everyday life and worked off the high calories and fat created by old-fashioned cooking. I can remember my Grandma Haney being exasperated when chicken wings became all the rage in bars and restaurants. She declared that in her day, chicken wings were food synonymous with the poor. A respectable family would not be caught dead eating chicken wings. Now, they charge more for a dozen wings than the scant, stringy meat is worth. My Gram had a lot of opinions.

Today, I will share the recipe for applesauce cookies from the old Grange Cookbook. Yes, this recipe includes raisins and nuts. We never put nuts in our applesauce cookies. Often, we'd make two batches, one with raisins and one without. In my opinion, the raisins make them delightful, but they are almost as good without them. Almost.

This is a simple drop cookie recipe that mixes up reasonably quickly. The cookies are moist, soft, and delicious. They freeze well. However, if you make them ahead of the holiday, be sure to freeze them because their high moisture content leads to early molding. Regardless of your opinion on raisins, with or without, this simple, old-fashioned, delicious spice cookie will be a welcome addition to your holiday cookie tray. To me, this cookie is pure nostalgia.

Applesauce Cookies

Ingredients:

2 1/4 Cups All Purpose Flour

1 tsp. Cinnamon

1 tsp. Nutmeg

1/4 tsp. Cloves

3/4 Cup Butter

1 Cup Sugar

1 Cup Warm Applesauce

1 tsp. Baking Soda

3/4 Cup Raisins (Optional)

1 Cup Nuts (Optional)

Directions:

Cream butter and gradually add sugar. Dissolve baking soda in applesauce and add to the butter and sugar mixture. Sift the flour and spices together and add to the mixture. Fold in the raisins and nuts, which have been dredged in part of the measured flour. Drop by spoonfuls on a well-greased baking sheet. Bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees) for 20 minutes.

I hope you enjoy this simple, soft, moist, cake-like applesauce cookie recipe. It is one of my favorites, and I am happy to share it and my memories with you. The Bean and I will be making cookies with GB this Saturday. Although slightly altered, this tradition is one I enjoy sharing with my girl. Hopefully, someday, my favorite bean and her children will come to my house and bake Christmas cookies with me when I am old.

On this cold and chilly December Friday, stay safe, be smart, enjoy recipes that remind you of your childhood, pass on loved traditions, and keep washing your hands, especially when cooking.

A New Era Begins

Tradition is important to me. Perhaps you have picked up on this in my writings. I have spent many years mourning the loss of traditions and family, and this grief over what I consider to be lost has only fueled my commitment to creating traditions with my daughter and husband. Several years ago, I decided to stop mourning the loss of what was and what would never be and put that energy into creating memories with my child. If I could not have the relationship I longed for with my mother, I would be the mother I always wanted/needed for my beautiful girl.

The holidays can be a particularly emotional time for me. Often, I keep my feelings of sadness, loss, and a bit of resentment to myself. This year, the days following Thanksgiving were particularly wrought with emotion. I can only describe it as "not feeling good in my head." Rather than sit and wallow in my sadness, I asked my daughter to join me for an impromptu shopping trip to a town about an hour from us. A change of scenery, time with my child, crowds of happy shoppers, holiday decorations, and a bit of retail therapy in the form of Christmas shopping were what I needed.

I believe I will make shopping on the Sunday after Thanksgiving a new tradition for The Bean and me. Our holiday traditions include watching our favorite holiday movies, baking cookies with GramBarb, decorating the house room by room, shopping for the perfect real Christmas tree, driving around looking at Christmas lights, and sleeping under the Christmas tree with The Bean before we put our presents under it. I look forward to each of these activities each and every year.

Since The Bean has been capable of forming and communicating her opinions, which began very early in life, she has demanded we get a real Christmas tree from our favorite tree lot. We used to go as a family to pick out a tree. However, once The Bean turned five, she and her dad would make an outing of it just the two of them. About two weeks before Christmas, they go Christmas shopping for mommy, go out to dinner for a daddy/daughter date, and then pick out the perfect Christmas tree. Despite many years of threatening to avoid the mess of a real tree and installing an artificial one, The Bean has won the battle of wills and gotten her real tree.

This year marks the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. Sigh. We will have an artificial tree for the first time in almost sixteen years. Our new artificial, nine-foot spruce will be delivered tomorrow. Why this break from tradition, you might ask. One simple answer: a boy. The Bean has a special friend who has been hanging around for quite some time now; by the looks of things, he will be around for a while. Sigh. This is the first time in her life I have seen my girl smitten with someone. She has liked boys in the past, but none were able to hold her attention like this one.

If I'm being transparent, I like this kid. I would think he was nice even if he wasn't holding my daughter's attention. He's polite, respectful, and friendly, with a very calm personality. Most importantly, he is very respectful and dotes on my girl. I have never been around kids who laugh as much as these two do. My friend Suzy-Q once observed the interactions between The Bibbed Wonder and myself, and she declared that he "cherishes" me. That is a good summation of our relationship. I can also say that I believe this young man "cherishes" my daughter. That makes my little heart happy. I am thrilled she is having such a positive experience with her first real boyfriend.

Although Pook-A-Dook, as we call him, is a great kid, he is rather frail. He's definitely not a farm boy. Pook-A-Dook is allergic to everything. I am not exaggerating. He is allergic to hay, grass, milk, medicines, flowers, and trees, especially pine trees. We can't even burn our favorite pine-scented candles when Pook-A-Dook is here. Because I like Pook-A-Dook, I make efforts to keep him comfortable. I keep Lactaid on hand so he doesn't react to my often dairy-filled meals. I keep his required allergy medicine on hand in case he reacts to something. I don't burn candles that I think he will react to. And now, I am breaking tradition and getting a fake tree.

As a mom, allowing someone to become deeply ingrained into our little world is an enormous trust. Trusting this young man with my daughter's safety and well-being is an even more significant step. If Pook-A-Dook were not such a good, trustworthy, level-headed, and intelligent kid, I would not allow my precious girl to ride in a car with him. Let's face it: I would have scared this kid off long ago by feeding him sour cream, cream cheese, and milk and insisting he go to the barn and feed the goats hay. I am not above biological warfare when it comes to the safety and well-being of my kid.

However, as is par for the course, The Bean has chosen who she hangs out with well. Although she keeps her circle tight, she has chosen to surround herself with kids I trust and approve of. Leave it to a boy to change a long-standing family tradition. Making this change from a real tree to an artificial tree is just the first of many concessions I know I must make to keep my girl happy and those she cares for happy. If Pook-A-Dook were not so important to her, I would feed him cheese fondue every night, burn pine candles, have multiple real trees in the house, and conveniently forget to buy allergy medicine and Lactaid. Pook-A-Dook is lucky I like him as much as I do. I jokingly remind him I always have options should he fall from favor. He's a good kid with a good sense of humor. He couldn't have survived this family if he had a poor sense of humor, for sure.

So, tomorrow night, we will begin a new era that includes a fake tree to keep one Pook-A-Dook safe, happy, and healthy. Much to my surprise and pleasure, Pook-A-Dook is willing to participate in all our other family traditions. He has chosen to bake cookies with GB and us on Saturday. I might even say he seems to be looking forward to it. We are happy to welcome Pook-A-Dook into our circle. Although I remain guarded in saying so, I like having him around. With teenagers, it's best not to get too attached. I get my little feelings hurt when someone I care for falls away and changes paths. Our family will welcome and enjoy time with him for as long as he is meant to walk along with us.

On this cold but sunny day, stay safe, be smart, make concessions for those you love, be willing to expand your circle, but do so with caution, enjoy the time you have with those you care for, make happy memories, and keep washing your hands.