Skip to main content

The Exchange

One of the few moments mothers find to themselves in the bustle of the holidays is in the kitchen.  Now there may be 100 things to do but I find refuge in the kitchen.  After the dinner is done, people in my house usually evacuate the kitchen as quickly as possible.  I really don't mind if they don't do a dish, as long as I can find a few minutes of quiet.  The other night after I did all those dishes I found my recipe books and clippings and began to plan for the cookie exchange.  It is a trip down a familiar lane, looking at all the recipes I have collected, some scrawled in my grandmother's perfect Palmer penmanship.   I drank a cup of tea and fantasized about what my cookies would look like this year.  After finding a recipe whose ingredients seemed simple enough to master, I got to work.  Molasses cookies!  This was one of my Grandmother Sandell's recipes and it was simple enough to make.  It calls for lukewarm coffee, molasses, and lots of flour.  Perfect.  Precooked, this batter had a dark almost smoky taste. ( Of course when the kids knew the batter was ready it was all hands on deck wanting to helptastehelp taste!)  When cooked it lost a little of that sublime flavor but was still delicious.  Then, you know, the packaging is all-important in the cookie exchange.  That would require a little thriftiness.

I love using Chinese take out containers for packaging.  After that it's free game.  I usually try to find a ribbon, paper, and pen that either match or coordinate.  This year I found brown in my trimmings bag and it worked well with the Molasses theme. 

 Then I took a closeup picture of the one that I misspelled - mosasses.  Can you tell?  I hope the recipient couldn't. 
Enjoy your baking!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tomorrow We Will Make Coffee

We are all searching for guarantees.  The guarantee on shipping from our website order, the guarantee on the newly-purchased mattress, the guarantee that when we wake up the electricity will still be on, the guarantee that the weather will get nicer soon, the guarantee that my car will still be parked where I left when I get back, the guarantee of a healthy pregnancy, the guarantee of an easy child.  All the things we expect at the beginning of the day to go our way, the meeting, the conference call, the sales pitch, the ruling, the game, the score.  I see people searching for schools, looking for a guarantee that the choices they make, the selection of this school over that school, will guarantee that their child will thrive, be successful, and maybe happy.  They want the guarantee.  They expect it when they walk in, as if they were going to a car wash, that the car will be perfectly cleaned when it comes out the other end.  As if kicking the tires will gu...
7 comments
Read more

What Is Grief?

 What is grief? It is standing in the shower and  you are suddenly crying and then you are sobbing. And you barely thought about it in the two days since you heard  your Uncle Rich passed. You thought about your dad and your cousins and your aunt and how sad they must be and you checked in on your dad. "I'm so so sorry." And you went to work and you did what you had to do. And now you are ready for another day and you are thinking of all the things and then you are crying and you are little again and vulnerable  and your heart hurts. And you remember everyone. Medford Lakes and a swimming pool and laughing so hard  and dancing around a Christmas tree and fireworks by the lake at night. And you can see his face and all their faces smiling Aunts and uncles and cousins and brothers who aren't here. And you remember his voice, deep and laughing, and you remember his kindness and his advice. "Are you taking vitamin C, Joannie?" You see all their faces and you mis...
6 comments
Read more

Nesting

This morning I am creating a nest. I am building it from scratch with spare parts that have been left around from another owner. We are vacationing in a house on a lake near Grandfathers, since that currently has no running water. We love it up here. It is a place that is carved in our hearts and our stories.  Since this is a foreign house, I am trying to make it feel like home. We have been here for 2 days and now I see the needs and small fixes I can do to make things more ‘ours’.  I have brewed coffee and put away the dishes from last night. I have placed a small rug by the door to catch our shoes that are caked in pine needles and fallen beech leaves and sand from the beach. I have moved the ottoman away from the chair it belongs to so that we have an extra seat. We have more people than it sits. Charlie made a chair with two pillows and leaned them against the end table. We are all working to build the nest. I am using pillows and blankets which I found in an upstairs clo...
Post a Comment
Read more