Recipe for deliciousness!

I had a breakthrough tonight! Today I am a lady who can once again eat certain cooked fruits! Last week, in a moment of weakness, I ate a slice of a delicious peach my mother was having for a snack. It was so so delicious (the first bite of peach I've had in maybe four years) and worth all the minor mouth itching. But that was just it: the itching was minor! There were no welts. I was welt-free! So I thought to myself: hey, maybe I can eat cooked peaches like a normal person with birch pollen-related cross-allergies (like myself). And that's what I did tonight. I ate half a cooked peach and I did not itch, welt, swell or die. I just enjoyed a piece of fruit more than I have ever enjoyed a food stuff before. So here is the recipe.

Sydney's Four-Year Baked Peaches
(serves 4)

2 peaches, halved and pitted
1/4 cup water
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
cinnamon
nutmeg

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Place peaches center-side up in a 13" x 9" glass baking dish. Sprinkle with cinnamon to taste. (I didn't fully cover them; just a splattered them. But if you like a lot of cinnamon, go nuts!) Sprinkle each one with just a couple grains of nutmeg: it is powerful stuff. Set aside.

NOTE: you could peel the peaches if you wanted to. If they have particularly thick skin, you may want to consider doing so. You also may want to slice a little off the back of each half so that they don't roll around in the baking dish.

3. Mix water, honey, sugar and vanilla in a small sauce pan. Cook over medium/medium-low heat until the sugar is melted and the mixture has thickened.

4. Spoon mixture over each peach, making sure to cover each face completely. It will pool in the centers and that is cool. Don't worry about overflow or washing away cinnamon. Just pour it all until your pan is empty.

5. Bake in oven for 15 minutes, or until the peaches are tender. But be careful, don't cook them to mush or they will not be as delicious!

6. Remove from oven and place in bowls. Serve with vanilla ice cream or marscapone cheese.

NOTE: I suggest mixing making the marscapone a little more interesting, like so:
For each person...
1/4 c. marscapone
1 tsp-1 tbsp sugar (depending on how sweet they like it), or 1 packet of splenda/equal
1-2 drops almond extract

Eat, enjoy, and think of me: the girl who can't eat delicious peaches (except sometimes when cooked) because her stupid body thinks they're birch pollen.

GROSS PICTURE! FOR SERIAL! LIKE WITH BLOOD AND STUFF! EW!

Some of you may be wondering what happened with my second allergy test, which I had like a month and a half ago. As you'll recall, I was initially tested for a bunch of gross categories (and here I mean gross in the sense of "general" rather than "icky"). Anything for which I did not test positive was put on the docket for the more specific, under-skin test. Have you ever gotten a TB test, to see if you've ever been exposed? If not, a nurse uses a very very fine, short needle to put a little pocket of fluid just under your skin. It hurts less than a bee sting unless you get a super good nurse, and then it doesn't hurt at all. Imagine having 18 TB tests done on your upper arm and that's what the second round of allergy testing was like. Would you like to see the result?
Yeah, the red dots are blood, but that wasn't so bad. The bigger the swollen welt, the more allergic I am! Woot! I was going to ask them for a list of all the things they tested me for with each one marked positive or negative. But then I was positive for all of them, so the list seemed redundant. The good news? I'm least allergic to dust! Hooray? ...! My favorite thing for which I was tested was "smut." It's a kind of mold, but I like being able to tell people that I'm allergic to smut. If only I could orchestrate it so that I would sneeze whenever I saw a "Girls Gone Wild" ad... I'm sure some Pavlovian thing with steel drums would do the trick. I'm also really allergic to grass, tree pollen and cats! Thank God I live in an arid, scrubby environment with no pets!