#88 Holiday Cookie Surprises
I love to bake.
I love to eat what I bake.
I don’t love getting wrapped up in the healthful (or not) aspects of what I’m baking.
Especially cookies.
They’re cookies.
They’re golden crispy bits of fat and sugar.
Sure, I can put nuts and dried fruit and stuff in them.
But deep down I know they are still golden crispy bits of fat and sugar.
Holiday cookies even more so.
Except.
There was this one time.
This one time when the holiday cookies had a special secret ingredient.
Before I tell you what it was we have to go back.
Back to a visit with my in-laws round about Christmas time.
My father-in-law’s second wife loved making beautifully decorated sugar cookies and we always ate copious amounts of them.
Until the visit that changed everything.
The visit when she put a bunch of extra cookies into a tin and sent them home with us.
We thanked her, piled the kids into the car, and headed to the next family gathering.
After about four hours at my parents we then headed to yet another get together.
During the drive we became peckish.
And decided to open the tin and break into those delicious frosted sugar cookies.
What I haven’t mentioned is that the second wife was, how shall I put it…
A chain smoker.
Yep, ashtrays everywhere and a perpetual haze in the air.
We dreaded that aspect of our visits, actually taking care to wear only clothing that could easily go through the washer. (No expensive wool sweaters.)
What we didn’t seem to realize, (because, frankly, after about thirty minutes in such an environment, you pretty much go nose blind) was that the smoke was not only permeating our hair and clothing but also coating all the food.
And going nose blind means your taste buds aren’t functioning up to par either.
So we didn’t really get the full effect of those cookies.
Until we opened that tin in the car.
And the smell of all the nastiest ashtrays in the world floated out of it.
You’d think that would have been the end right there.
But it wasn’t.
At least one occupant of the car went ahead and ate one.
Trust me when I tell you that the smell of a cookie that has been doused in cigarette smoke is nothing compared to the actual taste.
We never ate her cookies again.
We didn’t have the heart to tell her why.
Copyright© 2024 Anne Morse Hambrock All rights reserved.
My Smoky Past
My father-in-law’s second wife didn’t hold the patent on smoky houses. Once upon a time practically every home in America was a tobacco laced stinkfest. As evidenced by this pic of three-year old me at my Grandfather’s house. Note the three, yes THREE ashtrays within four feet of my seat. (There’s also the booze that I’m pretty sure was not meant for me but that’s a whole different topic.)
If we were to troll through my family photo albums you would be hard pressed to find anyone NOT holding a cigarette.
More Cookies
A couple weeks ago we had a surprise blast of snow that, while it didn’t turn out to be super deep, did mess up the roads enough that I decided to cancel my harp students.
I didn’t actually bake any cookies, though I thought about it.
What I did instead was revel in extra time.
I now had an open day stretched out before me with which I could do whatever I wanted.
It was like pulling out a coat you haven’t worn for months and finding money in the pocket.
I hope that your next “snow day” gives you the same gift.
And you don’t squander it by doing extra work.
Maybe go back to bed.
And make some cookies.
Even More Cookies
Next week I will probably be corralling my daughter for a cookie-making fest. Here are some of our past endeavors:
I used gingerbread for those - it’s my cookie of choice for use with complicated cookie cutters. The edges stay nice and sharp.
But if you don’t care so much about the decorating part and just want a really really delicious sugar cookie recipe, click here. The link will take you to my other blog where I did a review of the sugar cookie recipe from the old Betty Crocker 1950 “Big Red” cook book.
Winterscape
Taken during that “found” day…
Struggles
This has not been a very good week on the “tuning everything out” front.
I have found myself getting super stressed, not only by the news stories I can’t seem to avoid, but by random people in line at the post office or the grocery store or wherever just being their absolute worst selves.
Today it got so bad I came home and sat down at the harp to just do some meditation playing to snap myself out of it.
Here are my efforts. Not anything particularly earth shattering musically, and not very good sound quality because I just used the ipad.
But the dogs didn’t bark and spoil it.
And it calmed me down a lot.
(If clicking on the recording itself takes you to the dreaded “redirect” page click here instead and try going to the post through the main substack menu)
Holiday Gifting!
Shopping season is here!
These books make great holiday gifts!
Archives And New Subscribers
If you are just joining us thank you for signing up! I’m so happy you are here!
You can click this “Archives” button to see more or catch up on posts you may have missed.
Tip Jar
A big THANK YOU to everyone who has been dropping some love into my tip jar!
This button will take you to my PayPal tip jar. It is tied to my old Typepad “Anne And God” page (look for the button in the left hand sidebar) because I cannot use the Substack tip jar.
Substack only has a relationship with Stripe as a payment gateway and I recently had to close my Stripe account after they failed to adequately protect me from credit card fraud generated by identity thieves in Australia (a whole long story) so I have to do things in this roundabout way.
Thank you for reading and for your support.
Thank You
For subscribing and/or following! Your support gives me something to live up to!
Keep The Messages Coming!
A big “thank you” to all of you who have messaged me commented or hit “like” after reading my poems and commentary!
I appreciate the feedback and knowing how often I have struck a chord with your lives.
Anne - Smoke doesn't add that piquant edge just to coffee. When California has one of their biweekly raging fires, if the grapes on the vine are out there and growing strongly, they inhale deeply of the smoky haze. I well recall when our favorite winery, Navarro, saw the bulk of their grapes smoke fortified for free. They actually went ahead and bottled it, gave it a different label and made very sure to alert customers of the situation. Strangely, some people barely noticed and others were knocked on their ass by the smoke flavor. I fell into the latter category. My assessment was that it would likely work well as long as the meal was a heavy duty BBQ. Not a half-assed kind but the kind with thick smoke roiling from the smoker chimneys during the hours long smoke. In that case I speculated that the wine would pair nicely. I must admit, though, that after that first sip I consecrated the rest of the bottle as an offering to the gods.
Your cookies are gorgeous! I would think a tightly closed tin would keep out the smoke, but as I’ve never done a study, I take your word for it. It does infuse everything else—maybe so much of our food here in California, including the wine, as Crowden points out—that we think of it as normal flavoring.