So.
Last month, DD skin tested negative for hazelnut. She has never tested truly
positive to hazelnut.
When DD was five, we tested a panel of treenuts (hazelnut, pecan, almond, + ??) and when nothing came up positive, we got the green light (and encouragement) to introduce them-- but cautiously, obviously, given her reaction history and the fact that she very clearly had MFA anyway.
So we did-- she ate hazelnuts for a few months, and then we decided to branch out to almonds... second few that she ate, she broke into hives all over her back and torso within a few minutes. Obviously almond allergic!!
(This has since been confirmed with reactions to cross-contamination which is almost certainly almond.)
.... later that week, she had one equivocal reaction to a handful of hazelnuts, (which could easily have been almond cross-contamination), followed by a marginally positive skin test when she was about seven. Hard to know, though-- because the pistachio skin test basically ATE HER ARM.
Disappointed, we retreated from all treenuts.
But then we reconsidered. We live where about 99% of the North American filbert/hazelnut crop is grown.
She's now twelve.
We did have a bit of a hard time locating hazelnuts that have NO co-processing and are sold to the public. Our favorite supplier is completely
peanut free, but does handle small quantities of almonds (direct from a single grower in the San Joaquin) and local walnuts in VERY small amounts. This grower is listed in our resources section, for anyone interested. They do make WONDERFUL chocolate candies that are completely peanut-safe since they run their own equipment and use Guittard chocolates exclusively. They are also just really nice people.
ANYway...
We bought a pound of in-shell hazelnuts from them, I picked through them to remove any with cracked shells (because they
may have had contact with almonds, see), WASHED THEM IN VERY HOT WATER SEVERAL TIMES, and then dried/roasted them in my convection oven at 225F for an hour.
I then placed them into a doubled freezer bag and used a rock maple rolling pin to break the shells open, handpicked the nut meats out, and used the rolling pin to grind them into meal (as well as I could, anyway).
Samples: I then placed several WHOLE nuts into a ziploc bag, and also gave our allergist a sample of the ground material in a second ziploc bag (20g, weighed), and placed a known mass of milled flax seed (5g) into a second ziploc bag. He (and we) like to do challenges BLINDED-- that is, with a control. Since we were using applesauce to mask texture, it was important that the control match the nut sample in appearance, at least for that first few doses. I used flax-seed meal from Hodgson's Mill, an opened package that we've been using for several months.
The challenge was today:Initial set up was to check all vitals, and monitor both peak flows and blood pressure throughout.
Allergist took samples, and applesauce (Seneca natural-- two of the single-serve sizes), back to his office and mixed samples there, delivering them in 25mL dosing cups with plastic spoons to the exam room where we stayed. The RN's and Doc were within hailing distance throughout the entire 4+ hours of the challenge. They monitored DD during and after each dose, timing doses 20 minutes apart. She started with the flax-seed, and then moved on to a VERY small amount of hazelnut mixed into the applesauce-flax mixture (maybe 50 mg?)
We were there a looooonnnnng, loooooonnnnnnnnnng time, but DD basically ate about half a cup of hazelnuts today!!
She very definitely wants hazelnut pancakes for breakfast on Sunday morning, she said.