Nuts!

The call came in yesterday—there was to be a potluck lunch held at my husband’s office for a worker moving on to a new job. When my husband came home last night I asked him what he was going to bring. “What do you mean?” he said. “You are going to be part of the luncheon, so you need to bring something,” I said with more patience than I was feeling. Sometimes I think men feel they are off the hook for potluck meals, yet they are the first in line to eat. He shrugged.
I asked him to call the office and tell them that he’d be bringing a pan of apple crisp.
Last night he picked a bucket of organic apples from our trees. I started running them through the hand-cranked peeler/corer/slicer. My husband offered to finish the task, but I was in a groove. It was sweet that he wanted to pitch in, though. The recipe took longer than I expected, but boy did the kitchen smell great.
Today a woman from the office called at 10 a.m. to tell me how delicious the apple crisp was. She said she couldn’t wait until noon and had had her first serving. “What’s in it?” she asked. The recipe had called for dried cranberries and I suspected that was what she was questioning. “Did you put in any nuts?” she queried. I had to think for a moment and then remembered I had added a tiny amount of walnuts to the topping on a whim. “Oh,” was the response I heard. Apparently one of the staff is allergic to nuts and wouldn’t be able to have the apple crisp. I felt badly.
When my husband came home he was happy to report on how well the apple crisp had gone over. I told him I was sorry I had put in the nuts. He laughed. “Oh, the person with the allergy decided to take some Benadryl so she could eat the crisp after all. She’s fine.” I must say I was surprised that someone would risk a serious reaction to have apple crisp, but knowing she was able to join the dessert eaters was the best part of my day!