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Judith Browning wrote:These mittens belonged to my maternal grandmother...they've been stored rolled up in this little cake box from her best friends wedding for decades now. The handwriting is hers.
I would like to find a better way to preserve them to pass on to family one day...possibly framed under glass?
It feels like a deer skin, maybe sheep or goat? Very soft still. The seams are machine stitched and the ribbon stitched by hand...and there's that bit of sweet embroidery on the back of each.
I might press the ribbon and stuff them lightly with something?
Any ideas?
I know I could just pass on the cakebox as it's done the job so far...but it just seems so fragile and delicate.
Richard Kastanie wrote:I've long been enthusiastic about pawpaws, even attending the Ohio Pawpaw Festival a couple of years ago. I love the flavor of most pawpaws. However, before these past few years, I never had a chance to eat them in quantity. This is the second Pawpaw season that I've eaten a bunch, and have realized if I eat more than a few I react badly to them. Some others that I've talked to report the same thing. I just want to start this thread to hear others experiences, especially if you've made pawpaws a significant part of your diet, if only for a few weeks each year, or if you've processed them at all.
For me, it's not an allergic reaction. I can eat 3 or 4 a day for a couple of days and be fine, but if I keep it up they'll upset my stomach, as well as make me chilly and other neurological symptoms. These continue a few days after I stop eating them. This past weekend, I made a cornbread which included pureed pawpaws. This seemed to affect me dramatically more than fresh pawpaws do. Others are the cornbread and liked it, but after my reaction, I pressed them for an honest answer about if the pawpaw cornbread disturbed their system at all, and several said yes, although not as extreme as my reaction (I tend to be particularly sensitive to things like this).
I did some research and found out that the related tropical fruits soursop and graviola may be linked to an atypical form of Parkinson's in some sensitive individuals, and that the pawpaw has the same chemical, Annonacin, that may be responsible. I'm always skeptical of these studies that reduce the complexities of a whole food to a single chemical (the idea that Sassafras is carcinogenic is very suspect to me) but for the pawpaw it makes sense considering my own experience.
The Pawpaw does have a long history of being eaten, from American Indian times through pioneer days to now. I wonder just how much was typically eaten, if native people knew which stands were better quality, had a way of processing them, or were just highly adapted to eating them. I know plenty of people who like pawpaws but they mostly seem not to eat them in large quantities. I love my fruit, and will eat many servings of fruit a day if they're available. I just can't do that with pawpaws. Does anyone on this forum make pawpaws a regular part of their diet even if just briefly during harvest season? If so, does it work for you? I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this, there's more and more interest in pawpaws as an alternative crop, some even saying that it could be a superfood, but it seems to me that for at least a portion of people it just doesn't work to eat eat them more often then just as an occasional novelty, and processing and/or cooking may make it worse.
In the longer term, it should be possible to breed pawpaws with fewer toxins. Some varieties tested had more annonacin than others, if that is in fact the main culprit, selective breeding could result in a more agreeable pawpaw. Plenty of traditional foods (potatoes being one example) came from a wild ancestor with problematic levels of a toxin, and the selection that came with domestication reduced them. Also, traditional ways of food preparation often include processing that makes them easier to handle (think soaking beans). Possibly some of the native people in the pawpaw's native range had such a method that's now lost. So, I still think there's potential in pawpaws, but this issue needs to be put out there as the pawpaw has attracted more attention.
Matt McSpadden wrote:Hi Cm,
I'm not an expert on these, but I would guess it would not work well without a lot of extra work. I have a feeling the rock would distribute the heat away from the greenhouse too quickly without a ton of insulation... which could probably be done on the topside without blasting.
jim hughes wrote:Hell of day today! Got the roof done on the rear section and had time to dink around with my first rocket stove.