I can't wait until this Saturday. It's Cookie Day. Everyone who knows me at all well in my daily life knows about cookie day. Most find ways to be unavoidably busy on that day, but they await the results eagerly. On cookie day, in a fifteen hour non-stop (and I do mean non-stop) span, my kitchen will magically produce over a hundred dozen cookies. I have it down to a science. Each year I think that I've perfected it just a little bit better so that it won't really take fifteen hours, but it does. Every year. There we are at ten o'clock at night sitting at the kitchen table with every bone, muscle and potential nerve we might someday have, aching, with hundreds of bare-naked sugar cookies sitting in mounds before us waiting to be decorated.
I said we. You see, I'm not alone in this craziness. This cookie day thing has been going on, in some fashion, ever since I can remember. And the recipies aren't just mine, they date back two generations. My mother will be there. And my closest friend has graciously agreed to sign on for the duration (she likes to smell the cookies since she won't eat many of them.) My twenty-one year old daughter who is too busy even to call her mama much these days and when she does is most often smarter than her and superior to her, (okay, Maggie, how'd I do?) marked off this Saturday as soon as I told her it was cookie day. She'll be here without me even asking. There are some things that are just sacred.
I've been thinking about that. Cookie day is exhausting. It's an endurance contest. And yet, each year I look forward to it more than just about any other day. Why is that? I could make fewer cookies - we really don't need that many anymore. But will I? Don't count on it. It's not about the cookies - although I've been anticipating them for weeks. It's not even about providing desserts for the holiday or following tradition. It's the feeling that pervades the house, transforming my kitchen into a magic kingdom for those hours once a year. Everyone is happy. We laugh more in that one day than we do most of the year, the tear rolling down your face kind of laughing. We remember cookie days past. With decades of them, filled with laughter, there are loads of stories.
There was the time one of us (I won't point fingers here) dropped an egg on the dog. Yes, it really happened. Or the time one of us (still no fingers) accidentally fourpled a recipe instead of doubling it. Oh and then there was the year of the cookie fort. We had a new, very large, puppy who thought cookie day was just for her. To that point we'd always had either well mannered dogs, or ones who were too small to reach the long table where the cookies are put out to cool. But that year, we started to lose cookies as quickly as we were making them. At first, the men in the house were blamed. Then the kids. Eventually, much to her dismay and embarrassment, the puppy was caught. And my husband, who believes every single one of those cookies are his, set to work. An hour later the cookie table had walls. Real ones. Built out of part of a bed, some extra chairs, rope - you name it, it was there. Only problem was, us cookie bakers had a hard time reaching the table to leave any cookies!
We're all eager when the first batch comes out, ready to have that initial taste. It doesn't matter what kind of cookies we do first, that first taste is always perfect.
And every year, when we're so tired we can't stand ourselves and we have those sugar cookies to decorate - those times are filled with the absolute best memories. We frost and then decorate every single one of those hundreds of cookies. As the night wears on, the frosting colors get more interesting. Last year there was purple. And when it gets really late, inevitably, frosting will be slapped on a cookie and then the cookie is turned over on the table to pick up the layers of spilled decorations. Then there's my mother. Here we are with hours of work and no strength or energy left, and she sits down to help knock off the pile with a toothpick. Yes, a toothpick. For what, you ask? Well, yes, that would be to decorate her Christmas trees. And candy canes. Each cookie is painstakingly frosted and decorated as though it were a masterpiece. You get these tiny little lines of red stripes on white icing or lines of yellow draping along the green frosted Christmas tree - the string of lights, you know.
Me, I'm known for red hots. Every single cookie I decorate somehow incorporates at least one red hot. They're great for eyes, a nose, an open mouth (sometimes all three) for buttons, the bell clacker, for balls on the tree. It used to be those little silver balls. Anyone remember them? I loved those things. About ten years or so ago, they just disappeared off the face of the earth. They were there and then you couldn't buy them anywhere. Someone once told me it was because they broke teeth, but I've never been able to verify that. Or to find out what happened to them. I, for one, would pay dearly to have them back. Until then, I use red hots. This year I have five jars of them. And tonight, when I go to the grocery to pick up the last of my cookie ingredients, I'm sure I'm going to have to get at least one more jar of red hots. I just won't be able to stop myself. The thought of running out at ten o'clock at night with bare sugar cookies still before me is too horrible to even contemplate. I'd proabably have to cry.
And then comes the second best part of cookie day. Getting up early the next morning, coming downstairs to see every available surface covered with drying sugar cookies, making that critical first choice, and biting into the year's first taste of the most incredibly delicious cookie in the world. I've gone eleven months and 13 days without that taste. On Sunday morning, my fast will end.
And from then until sometime after Christmas when they will all be gone, I will have at least one sugar cookie for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, and any other times I can justify working them into my day. If I finish pages, I get a sugar cookie. Run an errand, I get a sugar cookie. And always, when I wrap presents, there are sugar cookies on the table beside me. How does one wrap a present without that sweet, filled with warm memories, soft friend joining you?
I hope I don't ever have to find out.
So...now, if you're still with me, and you want to become a part of cookie day, you can! Every year, as part of the tradition, we try out a new recipe. We make our standards, but each year we also try one new thing. A couple of years ago it was lemon bars and they were such a hit they've now become standard. (Cookie press cookies dropped by the wayside.) This year, I don't have a new recipe. Several weeks ago Yasmine sent me a recipe for rose petal jelly and it was great. If any of you have any special recipe that we could try, a favorite of yours, I'd sure love to have you send it to me!
In the meantime, I have a bad guy that's wreaking havoc with my day. I wonder if a few red hots would take care of him???
The picture was taken on cookie fort cookie day! Can you guess the culprit??
Transition time (again).
