Pawpaws and Their Festival

Aren’t pawpaws pretty fruits?

Look at them, with their smooth jade green skins and distinctive ovoid leaves. They are the largest native North American fruit, and they are the only species in the tropical custard apple family, Annonaceae, to grow in temperate climes. A distinctly Appalachian fruit, the has a unique flavor and texture; its flesh is creamy and rich with a complex variety of aromas and flavors depending upon ripeness, variety, and growing conditions. Most people say that pawpaws taste like bananas mixed with a range of fruit flavors from mango, papaya, berries, or melons.

What I found two weekends ago when I was privileged to serve as a judge for the 10th annual Ohio Pawpaw Festival’s best pawpaw contest and pawpaw cookoff, was that saying that pawpaws taste like bananas does the unique fruit a disservice.

The truth is, they taste like pawpaws. And the truth is that pawpaws have so many flavors locked into their skins that it is very hard to describe exactly what it is that they taste like. But, I, a confirmed banana-disliker (I don’t hate them–I just don’t like them much), found that there were more differences in the flavors of the two fruits than similarities.

Bananas tend to all taste alike–like bananas. When I was pregnant with Kat and would eat bananas as snacks because I could stomach them and they were good for me, I used to complain, “You know, I wish bananas came in another flavor, but all they every taste like is bananas.” Unlike other fruits like apples which vary widely in flavor, texture, color and aroma, bananas are pretty much bananas. At least, that is, when it comes to the ones we buy in the grocery stores. Bananas grown in their natural climate not for shipment to colder zones may indeed have diverse flavors, textures aromas and colors. But, in my experience, a banana is a banana is a banana.

Not so a pawpaw.

As you can see, I got to taste a whole lot of pawpaws in one afternoon. Fifteen different entries into the best pawpaw contest, to be exact, although I know we tasted more than fifteen individual fruits. Each entry had to include three pawpaws and some of these fruits differed so much from each other that we tasted more than one from some of the entries.

And what I can say is this: I am astounded by the differences in flavor among the different fruits.

Many of them tasted more of melon to me than banana–some of them had the exact scent of a ripe cantaloupe, while others had the more delicate flavor of a honeydew or even the flowery taste of a watermelon. Others tasted very custard-apple like–which makes sense, because the two fruits are close relatives. Some did taste sort of banana-like, but there was always an aftertaste that took the pawpaw away from the banana and into another realm entirely.

Only one of the fruits was truly horrid.

What is also interesting about the highly variable nature of the taste of pawpaws was that so much depended on how ripe the fruit was.

One overripe fruit the panel of judges (which included a local radio show host who is a local food fanatic, a food writer from Columbus, myself and a woman who studied pawpaws at Kentucky State University) found especially interesting. When I took the first bite I was shocked to discover the very distinct and unmistakable flavor of burnt caramel. It tasted exactly like sugar that had been caramelized just a hair past the caramel stage and into the slightly burnt stage. It had that exact sweetness tempered with an edge of burnt bitterness. It was fascinating.

I, of course, thought that one could definitely utilize such a flavor, in a custard or flan say, or perhaps in creme brulee.

Another discovery I made was that very slightly underripe fruits–ones that would be technically ripe within a day or two, so they were soft enough to eat, but not really sweet, tasted almost exactly like Haas avocados. They had the same buttery texture, because the flesh hadn’t softened to the custardy consistency that is typical of ripe pawpaws, and the same lightly sweet, rich flavor that a good avocado has. I couldn’t help but think it would be fun to experiment with slightly under-ripe fruits to see if I could make a native Appalachian quacamole with them. The only non-temperate produced ingredient would then be limes, which I cannot believe I could make a good guac without, though I might try replacing them with some homemade apple cider vinegar from Athens county. That might actually work.

(This is an experiment that will be carried out next year, when I can fight the raccoons to harvest the pawpaws in our yard before they are ripe.)

The different types of dishes that pawpaws were used in at the festival was pretty impressive. Two of my favorites were the pawpaw chili sauce, pictured here, to be used as a dip with these Punjabi style pastry turnovers that were filled with curried ground lamb, potatoes, peas and carrots. The sweetness of the pawpaw went well with the fiery chilies and a touch of sour from vinegar. Pawpaws were also used to brew beer specifically for the festival and they were also made into wines and meads. I preferred the meads myself as the pawpaw flavor was more apparent in the mead than it was in either the beer or the wine. (I thought that the bitter character of the hops in the beer really overpowered the fruit.)

Sweet dishes are a natural for any fruit and two desserts in the PawPaw cookoff really stood out. One was the PawPaw Apple Torte, pictured here and the other was the winning dessert, PawPaw Fosters Cream Pie. Both of these recipes used the natural flavor of the pawpaws to great effect and both managed to be delicious desserts without being too sweet, which is impressive.

My favorite pawpaw dessert of all time, however, is Chef Scott’s PawPaw Creme Brulee from Restaurant Zoe, which used to be in The Plains, but recently moved uptown in Athens. He uses pawpaw puree in the bottom of his ramekin, then puts in a not-too sweet vanilla creme over top it and then after the custard is baked, of course, burns a crackling sugar crust on top. That is one magnificent ending to a meal right there.

Another great pawpaw dessert though, is Snowville Creamery’s PawPaw Ice Cream Sandwiches. Featuring Snowville’s rich cream, the pawpaw ice cream, which is churned using this very Gilligan’s Island-looking contraption with a bicycle, is placed between two chewy-homemade gingersnaps. That is a great combination of flavors, textures and aromas, although I think that everyone who eats one of those ice cream sandwiches should probably take a turn on the bicycle churn, just to offset the calories consumed!

The Ohio PawPaw Festival is definitely a fun regional food event, and is well worth attending. In addition to the pawpaw foods to taste, there are workshops on growing pawpaws and all sorts of other country-living skills, there are wagons pulled by magnificent draft horses, talented local musicians, and great craftspeople, all coming together to celebrate Appalachia’s native fruit. Folks bring their kids, their dogs, their goats (no kidding–see that pretty Sanaan I photographed!) and have a great time–some of them even camp at the site all weekend, which must be fun.

Even if I don’t get to attend as a judge for any of the contests next year, I have been asked back to do a pawpaw cooking demonstration.

Maybe I’ll use underripe pawpaws and make Appalachian guacamole, or Appamole. That could be fun!

Thai Spicy Basil Shrimp

The success of this dish depends upon using the freshest shrimp possible. You don’t have to catch them yourself or buy them live, necessarily, but you want very sweet, very fresh shrimp in order for the flavors to balance together perfectly.

You can make this dish with scallops or squid, too–and probably crab, though I have never tried it that way. And of course, if you cannot eat seafood or can’t get any that is good, you can always make this dish with chicken, which is the usual way we eat it at our house anyway, seafood generally being thin on the ground in Southeastern Ohio.

You don’t need to use green beans and carrots as the vegetables in this dish, either. In the spring, I make a version with chicken that has asparagus in it that is absolutely delicious. Or, you can use garlic scapes and shiitake mushrooms. Sweet red or yellow bell peppers would taste really good, too.

If you look at the chicken version of this recipe, you will note that the chicken gets stir fried before the vegetables are added to the wok. The usual order of stir-frying is the aromatics go in at first, then the chicken and when it is nearly cooked through, the vegetables are added.

This version requires that you do the stir-frying in the opposite order–the vegetables get stir-fried after the aromatics and before the shrimp goes into the wok. I do it this way because the shrimp cook so very quickly that if I were to cook it first, they would overcook and become too tough. The freshwater shrimp I had cooked within seconds of hitting the hot wok, so I put them into the wok nearly at the end of the cooking process. The only ingredients that I put in after the shrimp was the basil and the lime juice.

After the lime juice, the dish is finished, and is ready to be scraped from the wok into a serving plate, and is ready to be eaten with plenty of steamed jasmine rice.

One more thing–this dish is meant to be quite spicy hot, so use the fresh Thai bird chilies liberally in it. I have eight Thai chili plants on my deck and they have produced so many fruits that the plants are bent over double. At first, the chilies weren’t very spicy at all, but the recent month’s worth of drought has improved their flavor immensely–now they are fiery and full of a sweet and tangy heat. I got by using only about seven or eight of them instead of the ten or twelve I would have had to use earlier this summer when they were juicier but not nearly so hot.

Oh–and another thing–if you don’t have shrimp stock, you can use chicken broth, fish stock, or vegetable broth instead.

So, without further ado, here is the recipe for Zak’s delicious birthday dinner dish. (Which, hopefully, I can make and eat again someday, preferably without a trip to the emergency room.)

Thai Spicy Basil Shrimp
Ingredients:

2 lbs. fresh shrimp peeled and deveined
1 tbsp. cornstarch
1 tbsp. fish sauce
3 tbsp. peanut oil
4 large shallots, sliced as thinly as you can manage
7-8 Thai bird chiles sliced thinly on the diagonal (or to taste–with me, more is better)
8 cloves garlic minced
2 heaping teaspoons palm sugar or raw sugar
fish sauce to taste–I used about three tablespoons of it for my version–you can use less or more depending on what you like.
3/4 lb. string beans, trimmed, washed, blanched and drained
½ cup carrots cut julienne
1/3 cup shrimp stock
2 cups Thai basil leaves packed
juice of two small limes

Method:

Toss the shrimp, the first measure of fish sauce and the cornstarch together and allow to marinate while you prepare ther est of the ingredients.

Heat the wok on high heat until a thread of thin grey smoke swirls up from the heated surface.

Add the peanut oil to the wok and allow it to heat up until it shimmers in the bottom of the wok–about thirty seconds. Add the shallots and chilies and stir fry until the shallots start to brown and everything is quite fragrant. Add the garlic, palm sugar and fish sauce, then the green beans and carrots.

Stir fry for about a minute, then add the shrimp, scraping all of the cornstarch marinade into the wok.

Stir fry quickly, until shrimp change color–this will take between thirty seconds to a minute.

Add shrimp stock and scrape any browned bits from the wok, then add the basil leaves. Cook, stirring, until the sauce thickens and the basil wilts.

Take the wok off the heat, stir in the lime juice and serve.

Shrimp Day, Part Two: Zak’s Birthday, Such As It Was

There you see the smiling birthday boy, with his birthday dinner, about an hour before disaster struck.

See, here is the thing: Zak was feeling a little midlife-crisisish over the fact that he was turning forty, so I decided to make a nice special birthday for him.

Kat had other ideas.

She woke us up before eight in the morning and proceeded to channel Satan in true toddler fashion. Nothing made her happy, everything made her scream, and the world was all awry.

I got up and took Kat downstairs, and let Zak go back to sleep. When he got up, Kat had been fed and was somewhat chilled out, from having been drawing with me for the past hour.

Then, we decided it was safe to take the girl and go to Casa for a nice birthday breakfast.

Boy, were we wrong.

Little Satan had other ideas in mind, and proceeded to scream at everything. It started with the church bells–as soon as we got out of the car, the local Catholic Church service let out to the loud peal of giant bells. Kat, probably because she was currently possessed of a demon, started freaking out all over the place. Screaming, writhing, screeching, clawing at the air–while we tried to walk down the street like nothing was particularly wrong with the insane red-headed toddler who happened to be attached to Zak.

Then, when we tried to sit down at Casa, Kat screamed to run around. So, we both took turns taking her for walks. Inside, outside, upside down we walked the kid until I was sure that I was going to drop in my tracks from lack of coffee. Then, she decided she could never be more than two feet from Zak’s side, and screamed if I tried to take over walking her.

It was a crap morning.

The rest of the day wasn’t so bad.

I made dinner–the recipe for which I will be giving in the next post–Thai Spicy Basil Shrimp–using the Thai basil and chilies that are taking over our deck garden. The garlic was locally grown and super-fresh, and the shrimp, of course, were the ones I had bought just the day before at the Farmer’s Market. I also used the shrimp stock I had made the day before from the shells and heads of the shrimp Zak, Dan and I had eaten after Dan and I had come off of a busy shift at Salaam. (Dan drums for our bellydancers. And, answers the phone and now and again, refills water glasses, because he is nice and likes to help out.)

And the dinner was good. Look at it. I mean, it was really, really good.

Zak, Morganna, Dan and I gobbled those shrimp and vegetables up with steamed jasmine rice as if we had never eaten before. (Kat ate some Thai Cilantro Chicken that I made for her. I will have to present the recipe here, because it was really good and it was something off the top of my head.)

So, there we were, sitting in the living room, being mellow after a good meal. Kat was on my lap, playing with her Ticklebird, when I got a peculiar sensation in the back of my throat. One that I had felt once before in a similar situation–I had eaten spicy black pepper shrimp, and my throat started to close up. I tried to swallow, and could, only barely.

There was liquid Benedryl in the kitchen, so I called to Zak calmly and asked him to please bring it to me, now.

Which he did. And I drank down between fifty and seventy-five milligrams of it. And waited, while everyone stared at me. I also took out my albuterol inhaler and took two puffs of that, just in case.

After about five minutes, I determined that I should probably go to the ER, because my throat was still swelling up, slowly, but swelling nonetheless.

Dan sprang into action, while Zak and Morganna stayed with Kat.

Off we went to the ER, where I was looked after at a snail’s pace, but since Dan was with me, I didn’t really get a chance to get scared. It turned out that they didn’t need to give me epinephrine–I had caught it fast enough and gotten enough benedryl and albuterol in my system to pretty much derail the reaction. Dan, bless him, at once point, once my tongue started to swell and I had trouble speaking, took to answering the intake receptionist for me. That is the best thing about having friends who know all of your business–when you can’t talk, they can talk for you.

They gave me prednisone and sent me home, even though my blood pressure was still through the roof. What mattered was that I could breathe and hadn’t died, although I really felt like wanting to for a while.

So, that is how I ruined Zak’s birthday.

I ended up sleeping most of Monday, but I did wake up enough to call and make an appointment with my primary care physician so she can do a blood test to see if I really am allergic to shrimp. I sure hope not–because Dan and I had just been talking about how we needed to go back to Baltimore next summer (Dan was born there, just like Zak, and all three of us lived there for some time in our lives) so we could eat crab to our hearts’ content. And well, the deal is–if you are allergic to shrimp, you really should eat no shellfish at all. Which really, really sucks.

It is possible that it wasn’t the shrimp, though. It could have been the black pepper that is in the Old Bay Seasoning which I didn’t even think about when I cooked the shrimp and made the stock the night before. See–I had a similar reaction to this two years ago, when I was pregnant with Kat, and had a blood test done for both black pepper and shrimp–and it turned out to be the pepper. Since then, I have generally avoided black pepper, and have found that I can eat very small amounts of it–but if there is a dish with lots of it, or I bite into a whole peppercorn, my mouth swells up.

It is possible that by boiling down the stock and concentrating the pepper, I created something that was just about bound to kill me.

Which is a shame–because that shrimp stock tasted so good. (To die for, I guess you could say.) And now, I feel as if no matter whether it is the pepper or the shrimp, I should get rid of it.

So–I guess I will be giving away a quart of really rich, really flavorful shrimp stock to a lucky friend sometime this week….sigh.

I’ll keep everyone posted about the status of my allergy once I find out. I go in on October 1st, and it usually takes a week or two to get results. In any event, I am getting an epipen from Dr. Ford, just in case. I’ll still carry the liquid Benedryl and use that as my first defense and use the epipen only if I need to, but I do want to have it with me, because anaphylaxiss is no fun at all.

And, frankly, as a chef, I need to know what dishes I can safely taste and which ones I will have to just trust my sense of smell and knowledge of spices to tell me how they taste.

Maybe next year, Zak’s birthday will be better.

Shrimp Day

Saturday morning, September 20th.

I awoke to a gorgeous early autumn day: brilliant blue sky, sweet, cooling breezes with just a hint of crispness to them, and glorious sunlight filtering through the whispering sycamore and pawpaw leaves.

My nose twitched once, and I knew–I just knew–it was Shrimp Day.

I could feel it in my bones. I knew it the same way that the Canadian Geese know it is the day to start flying south. I knew it the same way that mother cows know their own calves and will not let other calves come and nurse. I knew it the way that salmon know which river to swim up in order to go to their very own spawning grounds in order to mate, and then die.

It was just instinct that told me that at that very morning, at the Athens Farmer’s Market, the Hocking College Fish Management and Aquaculture Program was setting up their stall in order to sell the living harvest of their program: pound after pound of gorgeous freshwater shrimp. It is the one day a year here in Southeastern Ohio where foodies can feel like they live on the Gulf, and can feast on delicious super-fresh seafood. As far as I am concerned, it is cause for a celebration, and I was thrilled to know that I could give Zak a shrimp dinner–or two–for his birthday, which was on the following day.

So, it was with shaking hands that I got Kat up and dressed, fed and wiped off, gathered my canvas tote bags, and stuck the checkbook in my purse. I then gathered a snack for Kat, along with a sippy cup of juice and her two favorite critters, Ticklebird and Melora the Monkey, and set forth with child in tow, in order to pick up Morganna and James downtown and head for the market, where Zak was already set up to play flute and guitar.

I left my purse behind in my hurry, but I didn’t know that yet.

As I drove downtown, I found myself singing, “Shrimp day, shrimp day, oh, yes, it is shrimp day, oh, yeah,” much to Kat’s amusement. I pulled up in front of Tony’s bar, where the two of them were sitting and waiting on the bench outside, and when they hesitated to leap into the car, I honked and yelled, “Get in the damned car already, it’s shrimp day!”

“Shrimp day?” they asked. “How do you know?”

“I just do,” I said as they buckled in and I roared off down State Street, grinning like a fiend.

To their credit, both Morganna and James were just as excited as I was at the prospect of shrimp so fresh and sweet that the little critters were still alive and kicking, so we jabbered incessantly about the different ways in which we could cook them, while speculating on just how many we needed to buy.

Last year, I had only bought a pound of them, because I had no idea how good they would be, and after tasting their sweet, delicious meat, was sad that I could not get any more at the college, as they had sold out that day. I resolved never to make such a mistake again.

So we pulled into the parking lot of the market, and jumped out of the car. I grabbed the bags, and Morganna was in the process of unfolding the stroller when I realized that a crucial piece of equipment was missing from our entourage–my purse.

I then remembered that I had left it on the kitchen counter in my rush to make it out the door with the child, Ticklebird, Melora, sippy cup, tote bags, snack and everything else intact.

“James!” I barked in my best field-marshal voice. “Go forth and see if it is indeed shrimp day, and if it is, go forth and have them ready me a bag of at least three pounds of the critters, while Morganna, Kat and I fetch my purse. And call us to let us know it is indeed shrimp day, because I bloody well want to know if I am right or not.”

So, with a salute and a bow, James galumphed off across the asphalt in search of shrimp, while Morganna refolded the stroller, stowed it in the back of the Subaru, and I jumped in and started the car with a swiftness just this side of Batman on the trail of the Joker. I refrained from peeling out of the parking lot, though we were nearly killed by an idiot making an illegal turn against the light to enter the market lot as we were leaving. (Maybe she could feel the Shrimp Day Vibe, too.)

We made it just halfway home when James called to tell us in a voice filled with wonder that yes, it was indeed Shrimp Day, and how the hell did I know that?

At which point, I put the pedal to the metal and slalomed around the pedestrians on both sides of our hill, which is inconveniently sans sidewalks.

I screeched to a halt in driveway, and leaving the car running, dashed for the door. The key stuck in the lock, but eventually turned and I ran up the stairs, burst the the kitchen door, tripped over two cats, snatched my purse off the countertop, turned and nearly tripped back down the stairs as another cat tried to make an escape through the swinging door.

I closed the door behind me, turned and opened it, then turned the lock, then closed it again, took the stairs down to the ground in two strides and jumped back in the car, and set it to teleport mode and made it back to the market in less than five minutes.

We buzzed past Zak who was playing beautiful flute music at the entrance of the market and dodged the huge early fall crowds of people milling about, shopping, talking, campaigning, visiting, gossiping and generally standing right where I wanted to be. Morganna, to her credit, did not run over any old ladies, small children or musicians with Kat’s stroller, and Kat refrained from tossing either her Ticklebird or Melora Monkey from said stroller. (She saved that trick for later after the shrimp were safely bought and stowed back in the car while we went about our usual, more leisurely shopping missions.)

We arrived at the shrimp stall, breathless with excitement. After determining that the nice gentleman who heads up the Fish Management and Aquaculture Program would indeed take a check made out to Hocking College for his shrimp, I bought six pounds of still kicking water beasties. While students netted up my bounty and weighed them and bagged them, two Ohio University students came up and evinced interest in the shrimp. “Do they taste good?” they asked me.

“They are sweeter than any shrimp you can buy at the grocery store, because they are so fresh,” I answered.

When they saw them flipping their tails and wriggling, the two young ladies blanched and said, “But how do you cook them–they are still alive!”

So, in one breath, I rattled off this recipe:

“Take some beer–two bottles worth, and six lemons, cut in half, and some salt and pepper and spices–Old Bay Seasoning is best. Put them all in a pot with enough water to cover however much shrimp you have bought. Bring this to a boil–throw in a hot pepper or two if you like, or some pepper flakes, and let it boil nicely for about ten minutes to get a nice tasty broth going. Then, dump your shrimp in–once they are iced, they go into hibernation, and won’t feel a thing. As soon as they turn from blue to pink, which will take seconds, they are done. Fish them out, twist their heads off, toss the heads back in the pot, and put the headless shrimp on ice. Melt butter, put some Old Bay in it, squeeze lemon juice in it along with a bit of the cooking broth, and shell your shrimp, dip them in the butter stuff and eat them. Save the shells and put them back in the pot with the heads. Simmer this mixture until you have reduced the liquid by half. Strain it and you have shrimp stock which you can use in soups, jambalaya, sauces or whatnot. Two recipes in one.”

Their eyes widened, and they grinned. “Well done,” one said. “You sound like a professional.”

I bowed and said, “I’m the chef at Restaurant Salaam, come in and see us sometime.”

I then picked up my two bags of shrimp and wove my way through the crowds back to the car. Along the way, I spread the news to friends and neighbors that it was Shrimp Day, sending several more customers over to the stall for their fix of Appalachian home-grown seafood.

Later that night, after a crazy-making shift at the restaurant where we kicked ass and took names, and Dan and Leah worked the crowd with dazzling displays of drumming and dance, Dan and I came home to reinact last year’s late-night shrimp feast, although this time, we cooked and ate three pounds of shrimp instead of just one. (I had seen Dan in his side yard practicing his whip cracks on my way to work. Needless to say, I turned up his street, pulled over and rolled my window down. “You’ll be wanting to come home with me after work tonight, I yelled. “Why?” he asked. “Shrimp Day!” I answered–and he grinned and said, “You don’t have to ask me twice!” I then tore off towards the restaurant, happy in the knowledge that Dan would be sharing in the celebration that is Shrimp Day.)

After Zak put Kat to bed–I was still unwilling to let her try a food which is so likely to cause allergic reactions–we sat down to a feast of shrimp boiled in a broth of beer, lemons, Old Bay seasoning, fresh garlic, onions, chilies and smoked paprika. Dan sprinkled the still-shelled shrimp with a generous amount of Old Bay after I twisted their heads off and tossed them back into the pot, then I made a dip of melted butter, a bit of Old Bay, lemon juice and a few drops of the cooking liquid, and we had at the headless wee beasties. After we were sated–and even Dan refused to eat the last four shrimp which went into the pot along with the shells–Zak played music while Dan and I sat and talked and digested. The stockpot simmered until Dan went home. I strained the precious quart of shrimp stock into a container and tossed the heads and shells into the trash.

Shrimp Day was a marvelous, delicious success, and since our feast started around eleven pm, it made a great beginning to Zak’s birthday.

Too bad it would go downhill from there.

Food Blogger: MIA–Again.

The laptop upon which I do all of my work died a sad, spluttering death over a week ago, which is why I have not really answered email or worked on updating the blog. During that week, many other things were happening, too many for me to move all of my data over onto the functioning desktop computer so I could return to the blogosphere and the Internet in general.

But, all of those things that were going on: three birthdays (Kat’s second birthday and Zak’s fortieth, and Kim’s twenty-third), and the Southeastern Ohio Paw Paw Festival, for two examples, were food-heavy events which were laden with photo-opportunities and blogging possibilities.

So, I just spent an hour editing and uploading over twenty photographs to be included in the blog posts where I will be catching everyone up on all of my doings for the past however many days and days and days it has been since I have sat my butt in the chair to actually do some writing.

Oh, and the photograph of Kat playing on my laptop notwithstanding, she had nothing to do with its demise. It was something else entirely. No, I just thought that it was too cute of a picture not to use.

And, now, I will post this and go on to write real posts about really much more interesting topics, like cheesecakes, freshwater shrimp, anaphylaxis, (yes, I spent part of last night in the ER with my throat and tongue swelling, and scared to death. Thank you, Dan, for driving me and staying with me), toddler birthdays and regional food festivals.

At least I have a place where I can sit down and write as well as interact with the rest of the virtual world beyond the borders of my own personal life.

And yes, I am fine. No, we are not certain what caused the allergic reaction, but I have an appointment to have a blood test on October first at my regular physician’s office. And yes, I promise to take good care of myself. I am carrying liquid benedryl around with me all the time now, just in case.