When I was a kid I could sit and look at the Betty Crocker Cookie Book for hours. I would choose my favorite cookie from each page and would imagine what they would taste like. Every Christmas I would comb through the Christmas section aching to have somebody make those bell shaped cookies. Now I look at that and think 'no freaking way would those every come out like that' but it all seemed possible then.
I pulled it out to look at it over the weekend and it all came back to me. I remembered that my favorite Christmas cookie, Cranberry Drops, is from that cookbook. I won't make those till close to the weekend as they're best freshly made.
I don't know why I'm in Christmas cookie mode this year. We did more Cynthia baking over the weekend, in which I peruse recipes, gather ingredients and then tell Ernie what to do. It's really quite delightful. Yesterday as we made Char's Extremely Neurotic Crescent Cookies, Mel's Cappucino Thins, Judi's Shortbread Cookies and Mae's Rum Balls. They're not all baked yet but the dough is made. We listened to Otis Gibb's Christmas podcast as we did it along with assorted Christmas music...
Click below for Otis Gibbs' Christmas podcast featuring Ray Wylie Hubbard, Gretchen Peters, Jon Dee Graham, Kim Richey, Chuck Mead and Phil Kaufman sharing their favorite Christmas memories. Otis tells a few Christmas stories of his own and plays a recording he made ten years earlier of him driving two drunk friends home from the bar on Christmas Eve.
And then a random Christmas song that I love....