Another Holiday Mishap

First of all, as previously stated, we will definitely not be eating Chinese food again any time soon. I now have two reasons to wish we had just stayed home or gone to a movie instead.

The other day Austin and I mixed up some gingerbread dough so we could make our annual gingerbread men, women, reindeer, stars, etc., etc. The dough has to chill, so I placed it outside the back door because the fridge was really full of big pots from my ambitious week of making a different soup almost every night. Anyway, the weather then turned cold, as in below zero type weather. I figured the dough would be fine but did bring it into the fridge once there was room to get it closer to the right temperature to roll out. The dough was covered pretty firmly with plastic wrap but it had a little water on it from being outside. I drained it off and didn't really worry about it.

I had a busy week as usual, so after a day or so in the fridge I finally got some time Saturday night to start rolling out cookies. I moved the boxes of Chinese food that someone had stacked on top of the bowl of dough and pulled it out of the fridge. There was a little more water condensed on top of the plastic wrap so I started to pour it off again. This time the water was brownish, the color of the dough, so I was a little worried that it had gotten under the plastic wrap and made my dough soggy.

Well as soon as I poured the liquid off I could smell it. Chinese food. The box of leftovers had somehow tipped enough to leak onto my gingerbread dough. I was not thrilled.

My dough had been tainted by the remains of our Tiny Spicy Chicken.

What should I do? Should I throw it all out? Could I rinse it off? (Not a good idea I found out. It made the dough mushy.)

Could I cut off the parts that had been compromised?

Well, that's exactly what I did.

Now I'm as squeamish as the next person, and maybe even a little more so than most, so this was not really my favorite option. It's just that the thought of my lovely gingerbread dough being ruined and having to start over was more than I could take. I kept telling myself that ginger was a main ingredient in both the cookies AND the Chinese food so maybe it would be okay after all.

I cut off the obvious parts and went about my business. I kept sniffing around the dough once it was rolled out. If I came to a questionable part, I let Austin take his cookie cutters and have at it. I figured he's a kid and wouldn't notice anything funny as he eats it. So far he hasn't complained and he's eaten LOTS of cookies.

For the finishing touch I made my usual lemon icing to decorate them with. I just put in a lot more lemon flavoring than usual.

I just couldn't bring myself to try any cookies last night, because they all smelled like Chinese food to me by the time I was finished. They do taste pretty good today though.

From now on, I think I'll call them Tiny Spicy Cookies.

(I didn't give any of these cookies to any of the neighbors for obvious reasons, though I did consider - just for a second - taking some to the neighbors with the obnoxious Christmas lights. That wouldn't be very Christian of me though, would it?)