Dear Pillsbury: This is a hate letter...

For the past two weeks, I have hosted guest children in my kitchen almost every day.  So far, we have gone through 14 pounds of butter (14 to go!), 15 pounds of flour, and 15 pounds of sugar.  All hundred cookie cutters are scattered around the kitchen table (especially the favorites: cows and the pink poodle), and yesterday, two six year olds used an entire bottle of red and green decorating shakes on just 16 cookies.  Yup, it's cookie baking season, and things have been pretty crazy around here!

For much of my childhood, I was raised on a farm.  With a mom who baled hay, canned her own food, made our clothes, and was kind of like some weird energy machine bunny creature.  This season is a nod to my upbringing, and also to my Scandinavian descent, which decrees that Christmas be celebrated with marzipan, chocolate, cookies, cakes, and the scandinavian Christmas symbols: hearts and pigs.

I'm slowing down, though.  As I make my way through the butter-fueled catharsis that is our preparation for ... solstice, I keep stopping and saying "Wow, I used to blanch all of my own almonds and grind them myself to make marzipan.  Now I just buy it!"   And "I used to make 30 types of cookies every year, but it's just not going to happen.  And I don't care."  Now, it's more important that the kids have fun with the cookies than that I actually make them.  Does that make sense?

Which brings me to the reason why someone at Pillsbury needs to be given massive amounts of negative feedback.

I didn't have my son until I was 39. That gave me many years of finding the absolute best, high-quality ADULT cookies to make.  The sugar cookies, for example, contain cognac!  Yup.  And that's what the little angels have been rolling out and tainting with cheap sugar googaws all week long.  It's sad.  Especially when they began to "decorate" the half sugar cookie/half chocolate pepper cookies.  Ick.

But the really sad thing is that, if you make "adult" cookie doughs, you use more butter, and a greater percentage of butter to flour (I think) than you do for the kid cookie doughs.  So the dough that I have is good for one rollout, one batch cut out, and then it turns to sludge.  Not great for kids.

Yesterday, I dropped by Safeway specifically to buy the Pillsbury cookie dough that I have seen while walking by.  Internally, I recoiled the first time I saw it, but after two weeks of little darling cookie making, I was thinking "hey, I'll bet THAT cookie dough could deal with 8 hands and 12 cookie cutters!  And I didn't have time to look for a "perfect kid cookie dough" recipe.  (Got one, btw?)

So why do I now hate Pillsbury?

It goes back to when my son was about 1.5 and had terrible eczema.  He went to an allergist and was diagnosed with a peanut allergy (and wheat).  He is now six, and had never eaten peanuts in his life. Until he made a mistake on Halloween, and we spent five hours in the emergency room.

So I got this cookie dough.  I make cookies ALL THE TIME. I know cookies. I didn't ever suspect that this had peanuts in it, and it's only by reflex that I looked at the label at the back of the package.  And I have been taught by society to not be violent, but I soooooo wanted to just slap someone at Pillsbury.  Are you ready?

Pillsbury has used peanut flour to make their pre-packaged sugar cookie dough.

Let's think about this for a minute, shall we?

Do you know anyone who has a peanut allergy?  It's a real pain.  If you really have one, it doesn't get better. And for many children. it gets worse with every single exposure.  My child now has an epi pen at the school, and I have to carry one in my purse as well.

We always ask, and I always check labels.  But how in God's name will a mother know to check that the package of dough has peanut dough in it?  And what about kids who assume that, since it's a "homemade" cookie, they know what went into it?  Or the moms who, when asked, say "Of course not, it's just a sugar cookie."

I would LOVE to know how many children have had allergic reactions just because of what has to be the stupidest idea I have ever heard in the history of pre-packaged food.  Peanut allergies are weird. Lord knows why kids have them, or why so many MORE kids have them now than before.  They're lousy and not great.  But what rocket scientist chose to invisibly put peanuts into a product that doesn't need them!