From the L.A. Times
By Thanksgiving weekend, the prep work was well underway. All year long
she'd been saving the boxes from stationery and from her nylon
stockings, stashed with the Christmas ornaments. She'd made lists in
her perfectly inscrutable handwriting. In our basement refrigerator,
she had squirreled away some of the raspberry jam she made during the
summer.
So every fall, when my mom told us that she'd grown
tired of the whole idea of Christmas cookies and was giving them up,
she didn't mean it. We were never sure, though. And we'd whine on cue,
begging her to please at least make the kind we just couldn't live
without -- for me, the Russian tea cakes, for my brother, the spice
cookies called pepparkakor.
But most of her work went on in secret, while we were at school or after we'd gone to bed.
And
by Christmas Eve, we'd have maybe 100 dozen cookies, as many as 20
varieties of exquisite, painstakingly formed cookies, stored in our
freezer.
As a small child, bringing out box after box of
cookies that morning was kind of a miracle. Not quite as wonderful as
Santa, who would get a plate of them that night, but part of the blur
of a holiday full of magic and surprise.
The Christmas Feast:
Baking season is in full swing and it seems that everywhere you turn there are cookies. Everyone loves biting into a sugary Christmas cookie. But I think the best part about cookies is making them yourself, and getting kids and even the adults involved. Baking batches of all different types of cookies is my specialty at Christmas. I bring them to parties at the office and share them with neighbors and friends. I always have some on hand for when people stop by to visit, which can happen quite often during the holidays.
Infused with the holiday spirit, I’ve found myself putting eggnog-type flavorings in everything lately, including these French crepes I made for breakfast.
