The Art of Gifting!

As you may no Candy Babel has a large vintage tin selection for sale.
Stuffed with candy they make a really unique gift! However our Friends at Frock Boutique can help make it even more special! Stop in and scope there amazing gift selections Locate just up two blocks up Alberta st.

Its a Miracle.....New and Exciting at CB!

May could be the month you treat your mouth to something extraordinary!
Introductory Special buy 3 get one free Today thru Thursday 5.24.12

Candy Babel is now selling Miracle Frooties (tablets) a double factory sealed tablet made of dried Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum). A little red fruit about 1.3 to 1.8 cm (0.6 to 0.8 inch) in length and 8 mm (0.4 inch) in width. Miracle Fruit berries cause bitter and sour foods (lemons, grapes, vinegar,...), consumed after eating Miracle Fruit berries, to taste sweet.

The berry was first documented by explorer Chevalier des Marchais who searched for many different fruits during a 1725 excursion to its native West Africa. Marchais noticed that local tribes picked the berry from shrubs and chewed it before meals. The plant grows in bushes up to 20 feet (6.1 m) high in its native habitat but does not usually grow higher than ten feet in cultivation, and it produces two crops per year, after the end of the rainy season. It is an evergreen plant that produces small red berries, with flowers that are white and which are produced for many months of the year. The seedsare about the size of coffee beans.

The berry contains an active glycoprotein molecule, with some trailing carbohydrate chains, called miraculin. When the fleshy part of the fruit is eaten, this molecule binds to the tongue's taste buds, causing sour foods to taste sweet. While the exact cause for this change is unknown, one hypothesis is that the effect may be caused if miraculin works by distorting the shape of sweetness receptors "so that they become responsive to acids, instead of sugar and other sweet things".This effect lasts 15-30 minutes.

Once picked, the fruit only lasts a few days. Because of this we prefer the dried, powdered version, called Miracle Frooties. Fresh miracle berries are freeze dried moments after being picked to produce powdered Miracle Berries with the same effect as fresh berries. The powder is then compressed into Froooties for easier usage.

Since I’d been wanting to try these for ages, and I seem to have a few customers that don't eat any sugar, It seemed like a good time to offer something to tickle the taste buds in a sugar free way!

While I enjoy a good, old-fashioned drink-ourselves-silly party as much as the next person, this is a fun way to break up the evening. The effects only last around half an hour to an hour, and you’ll spend half that time stuffing fruit in your face and saying things like, “Mmmm, oh wow. It tastes like candy! That’s so weird.” And when you’re done sampling various treats, you can still enjoy the effects by making some citrus-y cocktails.
The Simply Orange people make a variety of not-from-concentrate, no-sugar-added citrus juices that are perfect for this. A word of warning: those things will go down easy. I was accidentally a little heavy handed with the Gin while making a a drink for a friend, and he said it tasted like delicious, sugary lemonade. If you’re a beer drinker, you can go for the sour beers. Avoid sugary drinks—they will taste way too sweet. Except Guinness is reported to taste like Chocolate mike!

Tips for hosting your own flavor-tripping party:
When you and your guests eat the miracle berry tablet, make sure everyone knows to let it dissolve in his/her mouth. (The goal is to coat your taste buds.) You’ll have to endure the semi-weird silence that occurs when a group of people all stand around and wait for a pill to disintegrate in their mouths, but that’ll be over soon enough.

Snacks that I recommend include:

• lemons
• limes (shockingly sweet)
• oranges
• grapefruit (amazingly delicious)
• pickled things
• carrots
• granny smith apples
• kombucha 
• super sour candy
• salt & vinegar chips (taste sweet!)
• rhubarb

And remember: Even though what you’re eating tastes like sweet candy, it’s still quite acidic, so don’t go too crazy!

Sweet Solutions

How Honey Could Cure Your Allergies

There have been no peer-reviewed scientific studies that have conclusively proven whether honey actually reduces allergies. Almost all evidence regarding the immunizing effects of eating honey is anecdotal. But these reports have proven persuasive enough for some people to try to fight their seasonal allergies by eating honey every day.
Without scientific inquiry, we're left with only theories about how honey could reduce allergies. The prevailing theory is that it works like a vaccination. Vaccines introduce dummy versions of a particular virus or germ into the body and effectively trick it into believing it's been invaded, triggering an immune system response [source: UNICEF]. This produces antibodies designated to fight off the foreign invaders. When the body is actually exposed to the harmful germ or virus, the antibodies are ready for them.
The idea behind eating honey is kind of like gradually vaccinating the body against allergens, a process called immunotherapy. Honey contains a variety of the same pollen spores that give allergy sufferers so much trouble when flowers and grasses are in bloom. Introducing these spores into the body in small amounts by eating honey should make the body accustomed to their presence and decrease the chance an immune system response like the release of histamine will occur [source: AAFP]. Since the concentration of pollen spores found in honey is low -- compared to, say, sniffing a flower directly -- then the production of antibodies shouldn't trigger symptoms similar to an allergic reaction. Ideally, the honey-eater won't have any reaction at all.
As innocuous as honey seems, it can actually pose health risks in some cases. Honey proponents warn that there is a potential for an allergic reaction to it. And since honey can contain bacteria that can cause infant botulism, health officials warn that children under 12 months of age whose immune systems haven't fully developed shouldn't eat honey at all [source: Mayo Clinic].
If a regimen is undertaken, however, local honey is generally accepted as the best variety to use. Local honey is produced by bees usually within a few miles of where the person eating the honey lives. There's no real rule of thumb on how local the honey has to be, but proponents suggest the closer, the better [source: Ogren]. This proximity increases the chances that the varieties of flowering plants and grasses giving the allergy sufferer trouble are the same kinds the bees are including in the honey they produce. After all, it wouldn't help much if you ate honey with spores from a type of grass that grows in Michigan if you suffer from allergies in Georgia.
At least one informal (unfunded) study on allergies and honey conducted by students at Xavier University in New Orleans produced positive results. Researchers divided participants into three groups: seasonal allergy sufferers, year-round allergy sufferers and non-allergy sufferers. These groups were further divided into three subgroups with some people taking two teaspoons of local honey per day, others taking the same amount of non-local honey each day and the final subgroup not taking honey at all. The Xavier students found that after six weeks, allergy sufferers from both categories suffered fewer symptoms and that the group taking local honey reported the most improvement [source: Cochran].
The study was never published, but the anecdotal evidence in favor of honey as an allergy reliever continues: Several of the study participants asked if they could keep the remaining honey after the experiment was concluded.
For more information on allergies and other related topics, visit the next page.

Sources

• Cochran, Brittany. "Honey: A sweet relief?" Xavier University. October 23, 2003. http://www.xula.edu/herald/issues/20031023/honey.html
• Foreman, Judy. "Does 'local honey' help prevent allergies?" Boston Globe. June 23, 2008. http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2008/06/23/does_eating_local_honey_help_prevent_allergies/
• Hasselbring, Bobbie. "What antihistamine side effects should I watch for?" Discovery Health. August 2000. http://health.discovery.com/centers/articles/articles.html?chrome=c02&article=LC_56¢er=p01
• Hoecker, Jay, M.D. "Infant botulism: Why is honey a concern?" Mayo Clinic. May 15, 2008. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/infant-botulism/HQ00854
• McClellan, Mark B. "RE: FDA's consideration of forcing prescription non-sedating antihistamines over the counter; docket #98P-0610." U.S. Food and Drug Administration. August 1, 2003. http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/03/Aug03/082003/98P-0610_emc-000093.txt
• Ogren, Tom. "Local honey and allergies." Pioneer Thinking. January 26, 2004. http://www.pioneerthinking.com/to_honey.html
• "Allergies: Things you can do to control our symptoms." American Academy of Family Physicians. http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/common/allergies/basics/083.printerview.html
• "Hay fever (seasonal allergic rhinitis)." Bupa. August 2007. http://hcd2.bupa.co.uk/fact_sheets/mosby_factsheets/allergicrhinitis.html
• "Histamine." Davidson College. 2000. http://www.bio.davidson.edu/courses/Immunology/Students/spring2000/lamar/mfirp.htm
• "How do bees make honey?" Lansing State Journal. July 30, 1997. http://www.pa.msu.edu/sciencet/ask_st/073097.html
• "How does immunization work?" UNICEF. http://www.unicef.org/immunization/index_how.html
• "Mold, dust mites, fungi, spores and pollen: bioaerosols in the human environment." June 1995. North Carolina State University. http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/fcs/mold.html
• "Pollination." Missouri Botanical Garden. http://www.mbgnet.net/bioplants/pollination.html

Spice Up Your Monday!

 

DWARF CARDAMOM Alpinia Nutans 

 

Candy Babel Is Happy To Be Spinning Again! 

 Mondays Flavor is Cardamom

Our small batch Sweetie Puff/ Organic Cotton Candy

Is a fluffy-treats made without any genetically modified organisms (GMO's),  

cholesterol free, transfats free, zero chemicals, gluten free, 

No synthetic flavors or artificial FD&C colorants. 
With less then sixty calories each!

More about Cardamom

Cardamom (or cardamon) refers to several plants of the similar genera Elettaria and Amomum in the ginger family Zingiberaceae. Both genera are native to India, Nepal and Bhutan; they are recognised by their small seed pod, triangular in cross-section and spindle-shaped, with a thin papery outer shell and small black seeds. Today, the majority of cardamom is still grown in southern India, although some other countries, such as Guatemala and Sri Lanka, have also begun to cultivate it. Elettaria pods are light green while Amomum pods are larger and dark brown.
It is the world's third most expensive spice by weight, outstripped in terms of its market value by only saffron and vanilla.

Food and drink 

Cardamom has a strong, unique taste, with an intensely aromatic, resinous fragrance. Black cardamom has a distinctly more smokey, though not bitter, aroma with a coolness some consider similar to mint.
Green cardamom is one of the most expensive spices by weight, but little is needed to impart the flavor. Cardamom is best stored in pod form because once the seeds are exposed or ground they quickly lose their flavor. However, high-quality ground cardamom is often more readily (and cheaply) available and is an acceptable substitute. For recipes requiring whole cardamom pods, a generally accepted equivalent is 10 pods equals 1½ teaspoons of ground cardamom.
It is a common ingredient in Indian cooking and is often used in baking in Nordic countries, such as in the Finnish sweet bread pulla or in the Scandinavian bread Julekake. In the Middle East, green cardamom powder is used as a spice for sweet dishes as well as traditional flavouring in coffee and tea. Cardamom pods are ground together with coffee beans to produce a powdered mixture of the two, which is boiled with water to make coffee. Cardamom is used in some extent in savoury dishes. In some Middle Eastern countries, coffee and cardamom are often ground in a wooden mortar, a mihbaj, and cooked together in a skillet, a "mehmas," over wood or gas, to produce mixtures that are as much as forty percent cardamom.
In South Asia, green cardamom is often used in traditional Indian sweets and in Masala chai (spiced tea). Black cardamom is sometimes used in garam masala for curries. It is occasionally used as a garnish in basmati rice and other dishes. It is often referred to as fat cardamom due to its size. Individual seeds are sometimes chewed and used in much the same way as chewing gum; it is even used by Wrigley's ('Eclipse Breeze Exotic Mint') where it states "with cardamom to neutralize the toughest breath odors." It has been known to be used for gin making.

 

Traditional medicine

Green cardamom is broadly used in South Asia to treat infections in teeth and gums, to prevent and treat throat troubles, congestion of the lungs and pulmonary tuberculosis, inflammation of eyelids and also digestive disorders. It also is used to break up kidney stones and gall stones, and was reportedly used as an antidote for both snake and scorpion venom. Amomum is used as a spice and as an ingredient in traditional medicine in systems of the traditional Chinese medicine in China, in Ayurveda in India, Pakistan, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Species in the genus Amomum are also used in traditional Indian medicine. Among other species, varieties and cultivars, Amomum villosum cultivated in China, Laos and Vietnam is used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat stomach issues, constipation, dysentery, and other digestion problems. "Tsaoko" cardamom Amomum tsao-ko is cultivated in Yunnan, China and northwest Vietnam, both for medicinal purposes and as a spice. Increased demand since the 1980s, principally from China, for both Amomum villosum and Amomum tsao-ko has provided a key source of income for poor farmers living at higher altitudes in localized areas of China, Laos and Vietnam, people typically isolated from many other markets. Until recently, Nepal had been the world's largest producer of large cardamom. Guatemala has become the world's biggest producer and exporter of cardamom, with an export total of US$137.2 million for 2007.

Piñata Party Time! at Candy Babel!

With no further a due I am proud to announce the first" Make your Own Piñata" series!

Please Reserve Your Spot Today: Simply fill in the below form!

Form Link