Adventures in Cookie-Making

I continue to hang on to Normal Rockwell imagines, especially when it comes to the holidays. One would think that I would have given up on that years ago.

We decided to make Christmas cookies. Roll-out cookies, to be precise. I pictured candles burning, Christmas music playing, the family gathered around the table, laughing and making cookies together.

It was originally Jay's idea to make cookies, and he'd searched online for a recipe. He found one and printed it out, and was later devastated to learn that it was a regular sugar cookies recipe, not a roll-out recipe. (Totally not his fault; the recipe pictured roll-out cookies!)

Meltdown #1.

That was a couple of days ago. We made them anyway, with the promise that we'd also make roll-out cookies.

It took me two days (recovering from making the first batch) to make the roll-out cookies. Jay and I made the recipe, and then we all sat down to roll out the cookies. Within minutes, I noticed that GracieGirl became agitated. Then, she started flipping out, scratching at her arms, crying because they itched so badly. It was driving her crazy, and we quickly gave her medicine and took her upstairs for a bath.

As a baby, GracieGirl couldn't handle gluten. She didn't have gluten for several years, and then we reintroduced wheat. It wasn't a conscious effort, really, more just laziness on my part. She seemed to do fine with it, but slowly started having some symptoms again. The allergist was sure that she had Celiac Disease, and he ordered a blood test. He was very surprised when she tested negative.

In the past week, she's had some symptoms again, although we hadn't associated them with gluten. One day, she came in with a huge hive on her face. I gave her medicine and it went away. The same thing happened the following day, again, just one hive. Another time, she started crying because she said that she itched all over. Again, we gave her medicine and a bath, and she seemed to be okay. The backs of both of her legs are covered with eczema, which comes and goes but is currently back with a vengeance. She's also had a lot of GI issues.

This latest incident just kind of firmed up that it must be the wheat. She was fine until she started rolling out the cookies, using wheat flour to roll them out.

She's feeling better now. I made some Monkey Munch for her, so she wasn't too sad about not having the Christmas cookies.

Time to go pull out my GF cookies recipes!


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