Gorgonbread

"I'm always down for a Spice Girls reunion.

I love the Scary hair and platforms."

-- Melanie "Scary Spice" Brown

Medusa gingerbread cookie 12-25-13 

"There's nothing sadder in this world

than to awake Christmas morning

and not be a child."

-- Erma Bombeck

My son Sam and I baked cutout gingerbread cookies together, for two very specific reasons:

1. Sam wanted to eat the dough. He's been overdosing on Starbucks gingerbread lattes and wanted a hit of the real thing.

2. I wanted to make a Medusa gingerbread "man."

Our cookbook that we got the recipe from didn't call them gingerbread men, though. It called them gingerbread "people."  So our cookies weren't just delicious, they were also PC. (Which, as you probably already know, stands for "pretty cute.")

Sam likes to bake. He makes really delicious biscuits and beautiful pumpkin pies. He started "baking" when he was steady enough to stand on a chair beside me at the kitchen counter. He was about 1 1/2. I'd fold down one of my aprons and sort of swaddle him in it, then give him a bowl, some spoons and measuring cups, jars of spices, and let him go at it. He could put whatever he wanted into his bowl, and mix and stir to his heart's delight while I made muffins, or pizza crust, or cookies. I'd let him dump pre-measured cups of sugar and flour into whatever I was making. Sometimes it hit the bowl. Sometimes it hit the counter. Sometimes it hit the floor. There was usually a big mess to clean up, but it didn't matter. Being side-by-side together in the kitchen -- that's what mattered.

It still is.

Sam is all grown up. But something about baking cookies together brought back his little kid days, and that warmed me more than the heat coming from the oven or the spices in the gingerbread. While he licked batter from a spoon and piped faces and buttons on the "men," I made my Medusa cookie and cleaned up the bowls, the counter and the floor.

Some things never change.

Of course, I played with my food before I ate it:

Man. Person. Whatever.

I think I'll just call her a "Spice Girl."

Merry Christmas!

Waddaya think cookies grow on TREES?

"Sophie and I would use her Christmas break to make 

homemade treats from our very own kitchen.

I mean, if thousands of meth addicts can do it, why can't we?"

-- Celia Rivenbark, 

You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start in the Morning

Self portrait 12-20-13

 "They were almond cookies,

although they could have been made of

spinach and shoes for all I cared.

I ate eleven of them, right in a row.

It is rude to take the last cookie."

-- Lemony Snicket, Who Could That Be At This Hour?

"The measuring and mixing always smoothed out her thinking processes --

nothing was as calming as creaming butter --

and when the kitchen was warm from the oven overheating

and the smell of baking chocolate,

she took final stock of where she'd been and where she was going.

Everything was fine."

-- Jennifer Crusie, Maybe This Time

The holiday candy has really been piling up around here, and nobody was eating it.

And the pool where I swim is closed for re-painting, so I had the morning clear.

So I chopped up all of the candy into chunks -- chocolate bars, chocolate candies, six little chocolate Santas from last year, an entire Whitman's Sampler -- some filled with nuts, some filled with caramel, some filled with peanut butter, some filled with toffee. I chopped up two chocolate turkeys, a chocolate cornucopia, some chocolate covered Oreos, chocolate covered pretzels, and a little bit of leftover Halloween candy (i.e. one fun-size Nestle Crunch bar, and a mini $100 Grand Bar). If it had anything to do with chocolate, it went under the knife.

I had a pretty big bowlful of chunks.

Then I mixed up a double batch of my regular chocolate chip cookie recipe, but substituted the bowlful of chocolate-covered everything for the chocolate chips. So they were sort of like candy-bar cookies. Not quite chocolate chunk. More like chocolate junk.

And lemme tell ya, my house smelled pretty damn delicious.
(And baking is pretty effective therapy. Maybe that's why so many people bake during the holidays.)

Because people keep giving us plates and plates of cookies, and fudge, and bags of Chex Mix, and peanut brittle, and homemade candy, and ... well, you get the picture. It's the holidays, so people feel compelled to bake. And even though such gifts might appear to be gestures of kindness and generosity and good will, I'm starting to think these desperate folks are just trying to keep the crazy at bay.

(By the way, a note to anyone who has the urge to drop off any more sweets at our door: we'd rather have wine. Wine is also pretty effective therapy, with fewer calories and fewer dishes to wash. And just for the record, I am not leaving Santa Claus cookies and milk on Christmas Eve. I'm making him a Manhattan.)

Anyway, since we are all carbed-out around here, I popped my Chocolate Junk Cookies into the freezer for another day.

Costume? What costume?