Our church had its annual fall festival this past Sunday, which for me means the pagan holiday of Halloween (and I mean that in the nicest way possible. Go ahead and comment on it. You know you want to...) is now over for the most part, except for the kids going with my mom to several other churches fall festival functions to revel in all of that Inflatable Jumpy Thing and Candy More Candy goodness that belongs to childhood. As I get older I notice, like those who are older than me said I would, that as soon as the calendar hits November 1st, the rest of the year is in a great hurry to expire. Thanksgiving comes in fast and furious with all of that food (glorious food!) and before you've even picked all the meat off the turkey and put the leftovers in the fridge, it's every weekend booked for holiday parties (with more food) and then you blink and it's Christmas Eve service at church, after which you're sitting on the couch with your family looking at the beautiful tree with presents piled under it that you only vaguely remember wrapping. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!
Every single second of the AutumnChristmasHolidays, as I call them, is wonderful. The best part of all of the hustling and bustling is the baking!!!
I LOVE baking Christmas cookies! And pies. And cakes. I've just been working on my cookbook that has all of my favorite collected recipes in it. I took them all and typed each one on it's own page and put it in a page protector. That may seem like wasted space, but I have a hard time reading a recipe that has other recipes on the same page. It's a quirk. I love having a photo of the recipe I'm doing, too, so it's nice to put each one on its own with a photo so I can see exactly what it is I want to accomplish. Tonight I made the dough for Gossamer Spice Cookies (recipe to follow, if they turn out right and I approve them for inclusion in the final cookbook. Stay tuned on that.) The mixture smells divine. All sorts of spices in them. One I had to substitue because I couldn't afford it. A 2 oz. jar of ground cardamom at Kroger was $9.00!!! I looked up a substitute on Google though (equal parts cinnamon and nutmeg) and also found that if I MUST use cardamom, that the next time I'm over in Cobb county near the World Cost Market thing or whatever, over there at Town Center, that I can get some for around $2.49. Much better. Seeing as how that's kind of a ways to go however, I opted for the substitute this time around. Gotta run check the dough and see if it's workable yet. I'll post again when they've been baked and tested. If they pass then some of you will be getting a tin of them under the tree with your name on it! But only if you make the nice list...
TTFN
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