Twas three days before Christmas and all through my house, not a cookie was baking, not even a ... snickerdoodle.Which got me to thinking about Aunt Viola and her cookies and how she baked more cookies than the Keebler elves ever did. Do I recall that one year she baked thousands and thousands of cookies -- enough for every man, woman and child in the Columbus area?
How I remember those vanilla strips and little rolled-up, sugar-dusted little bites of heaven.
But, God forgive me, I also remember how few cookies she gave us for a hungry family of seven. How we were lucky if we even got a vanilla strip, let alone two of them. And I remember wondering who all the people were who got so darned many cookies when we got a small tin of them. Yep, that's the Christmas spirit, nannygoat!
Mom also made beautiful cookies, cookies I can only dream about now -- springerles, green wreaths with red berries, date pinwheels, and cut-out cookies, especially the Santa face. Even more spectacular was her divinity in pink, green and white. And fudge. And popcorn balls.
Heck, Mom was making cookies right up to the time she went to First Community Village, and I'm surprised she didn't find her way into the kitchen there and whip some up.
The real question is: Is the cookie-making gene extinct? (And who did Aunt Viola give all those cookies to?)
2 comments:
Christmas cookies. Mom's coffee cake. French breakfast puffs! :) Those are the good old days before the food police arrived and warned us about heart disease from Crisco, diabetes, and of course, rotting teeth.
You know, now I just HAVE TO bake something! Damn the food police! We have turned into a sober bunch.
And as for Aunt Viola, I figured we were lucky to get any of her cookies, considering we weren't the most loving and attentive nieces she had. And after I tried making Vanilla Strips (which I probably sneaked out of the tin at night when everyone was sleeping), I really understood why we got like 4 in the whole tin. Those things are the dickens to make! They stick so badly to the cloth or counter that getting them onto the cookie sheet took the patience
of Job.
So, Virginia, the cookie gene is alive, but not too well, chained as it is in a dingy cell with the food and pleasure police sticking their guns through the bars threatening us every time we salivate! :(
As you might guess, it's not the food police keeping me from baking. It's that it's messy and time-consuming (like I'm doing anything else anyway, right?), and there's not a crew of happy campers around to eat the things.
At least you tried the vanilla strips. The recipe was too daunting for me.
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