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Note to Self: Crummy Christmas Cookies

Note to self 1:

 

December 22, 2008

 

Hopefully, you will read this well before disaster strikes.  I’m thinking of attaching this to the December calendar so that when I think that I want to bake millions of gingerbread cookies, I will stop and reconsider.  Remember this Christmas, when you spent roughly ten hours in the kitchen making dozens of cookies and then frosting them.  You thought you came up with a brilliant way to streamline the process, which was to roll the dough into a long rope, then cut slices instead of using cookie cutters.  This year, like every year, you think, “I should really sell these cookies, they’re that good,” but by the end of the day, you don’t even want to hear the word bread and ginger put together, let alone bake ever again. 

            So while you cook, you eat the cookies.  This wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t know what went in them and you could con yourself into thinking they couldn’t be very harmful.  After all, they’re just flour, eggs, sugar and well, butter, right?  Yes, but when you eat perhaps twelve of them, these things add up.  It’s like when you go to the grocery store and the cashier tells you the total and you think, “How is that possible?”  And when you leave with the receipt, you stop on your way out the door to study your spending in black and white, which is almost always correct, dangit.

            And so it is with the cookies.  You will eat one from the first batch, just to be sure they taste ok.  Because you can’t hand out cookies that you haven’t sampled yourself.  Of course it’s delicious, all soft and sweet with a little kick thrown in thanks to the ginger.  The second one you eat just to make sure you were thinking clearly about the first batch.  Pretty soon you lose count how many cookies you eat, because you’re having so much fun.  However, the fun fades as exhaustion sets in and you’re faced with every horizontal space covered in naked gingerbread cookies waiting for frosting.  That’s when you eat to stay awake.  And when your hubby gets home from work, eats three measly cookies and declares himself stuffed, resist the urge to punch him, because you need him to deliver the twenty plates of cookies you just slaved over all day.  Which would have been twenty one plates of cookies had you not been the one to bake them, nibbling away at them like a starving child of China, the same ones your mother told you about when you were little and you didn’t want to finish your broccoli. 

            So please, self.  Do not bake cookies in 2009.  Consider giving out the recipe instead.  Or better yet, go out of town!  

Cookies

Last year, in complete cookie exhaustion, I vowed I would never make gingerbread cookies again.  But then I got a craving and succumbed.  I lost count of how many cookies I made…and how many cookies I ate in the process.  This time I mean it.  I will not bake cookies next year.  I won't.  Really.  So don't even ask.  

  But at least the kids helped a bit.  

 Even the oldest got into it. Of course, the sprinkles might have had something to do with it.

A Major Award

Earlier this month, my mother sent us a major award.  Thanks, Mom.  This ornament really goes with our decor.  And it's from Italy, too!

human kitty

Our cat goes on walks with us.  She's drawn to the basement when we're all laying on the couch watching movies.  Now she's doing puzzles with us.  We think she's going through an identity crisis.  Does she know she's a feline, or does she think she's just a hairy woman with perpetual PMS? 

Pecan Pie

For years now I've devoured my brother-in-law's home made pecan pie, which I beg him to bring every Thanksgiving.  But this year he and his family went to Hawaii for Turkey Day and left me without any dessert.  So I ventured into pie territory and made my own--complete with homemade crust.  (I planned on buying a crust, but my dear little boy, the youngest left at home while his brothers ran off to play, refused to go to the store.  I know you're thinking, "Well, just make him go.  Be the parent."  Obviously, you do not know how stubborn my youngest can be.)  

So here it is, a delicioius, homemade pecan pie made with all natural ingredients.  No fake stuff.  No margerine (which I'm told is one ingredient away from plastic).  Lots of butter.  Lots of real pecans, not pecan flavoring.  Totally fattening.  And totally worth it.  So, dear brother-in-law, you do not have to fear Thanksgiving next year.  I have found my pecan powers deep within the cellulite of my psyche.