Me Love Cookies!

Happy Holidays – it’s the most wonderful time of the year!!!  It’s Christmas cookie time!!

Don’t you just feel the lbs packing on by simply looking at them?? No – great, you’re my kind of person!

It’s also the most stressful time of the year… Soooo, so much to do.  And I always make life harder because I like to bake - at Christmas.  And when you are married to a man who doesn’t eat sweets, about the only time I bake anymore is - at Christmas.   

You see, if I baked any other time of the year, I’d be eating two dozen cookies all by myself and while I could easily do that – it’s probably not really a food group.   Ah yes, have you had the sugar portion of your lunch and dinner yet today – no?  Well, here, have a couple dozen homemade cookies, that should do it….

I have also started to notice that when you don’t bake as much as you used to – you forget things.  I used to have every recipe memorized; these are favorite things you know.  But I am finding now that I have difficulty (A) remembering what ingredients I need (thanks hubby for late night runs to the store for rice krispies, stick margarine, and even MORE marshmallows) and (B) I forget how to make them, despite the simplicity of most of the recipes.  I figured out years back, anything you can boil in a pan is much, much, much less stressful (if you can remember what the hell you are doing) – therefore the frosted sugar cookies are really the only baked Christmas cookie anymore, probably because they are my personal favorite!!

Also of note, my haystacks have been a disaster for the last three years, this year is no exception – half worked out just fine, the other half got shoved into cupcake cups to hold them together – yet all came from the SAME batch – now how is that?  

Last year’s haystack disaster - the dog at them, yes ALL of them and the tinfoil they were on!  And the year before, they were just way too gloppy.  Now when the dog ate them I thought no one would miss them, there are so many kinds of cookies on the plate.   I was wrong…. people have their favorites you know.  So I soldier on, maybe next year will be the year they came out perfect again?  No promises.  (Note to grocery list – buy more paper cupcake cups…..)

Another thing I am reluctantly learning is that - we are getting older.  When all my friends were in their 20’s, this really was a highlight, because what 20 something chic was in the kitchen baking for them every year?  One who loves to bake – that’s who!  Then we hit the next decade, people got married, people baked their own cookies, wives sometimes thought it odd cookies would show up once a year from some chic they knew in school, people fell off the list…. But there has always been a solid dozen recipients – a few left a few entered – but always at least a dozen and five absolute constants….. No change – they are ALWAYS on the list.

But as I was baking this year I knew it felt different.  I thought about the fact that even I eat less sugar (ha, who am I kidding, I just bake less, flippin Frappes have stepped in for my weekly homemade cookie piles…) Then I sent the note out telling everyone that the cookie elves would be delivering this weekend, and for those who were no longer in the area, the Postman would be acting as the honorary cookie elf.  

And then it happened, I got a fateful reply that one of my constant cookie receivers would up his Metformin intake in anticipation of the cookies arrival.  Metformin??  Ok, look it up, look it up, ah – there it is – “is an oral antidiabetic drug in the biguanide class. It is the first line drug of choice for the treatment of type 2 diabetes”.  

Well then, it’s now official my lovingly baked and boiled cookies will be adding to my friends Christmas stress level not helping it – AND it certainly won’t be helping his diabetes out at all.  

So here we have it, we have gone from people who could never get enough cookies on their Christmas plates, to those who probably shouldn’t get any –can I make sugar free cookies?   Maybe I can for the “sugar cookie” portion of it all (ironic huh?), but certainly they don’t make sugar free marshmallows and chocolate chips – do they? Now I’m stressed….  

Although the cookie monster never ages, apparently the rest of us do – crap.   

Well, try to have a yummyful day anyway– brought to you by the blue fuzzyman himself (and his elfin assistants)!  Did someone say cooookkkiieee?????? Me love cookies!!!