cookie monster

 

Someone else’s Christmas cookies

This year, my contribution to our family Christmas Eve celebration was cookies, so I baked cookies. Many cookies. Dozens of cookies, not to put too fine a point on it.

Ahh, cookie dough!

Let me be honest here:  not all the cookie dough I make goes into the oven.  My sweet tooth, you see, has a strong affinity for cookie dough, so a certain percentage of it goes directly from the bowl into my tummy.

Furthermore, cookie dough made with butter, sugar, flour and glacéed fruit (think shortbread, refrigerator cookies and the like), is heaven on a spoon, pure and simple.  I can’t resist it!

The infatuation doesn’t stop there, of course. Cookies fresh out of the oven are a glorious thing. Cookies sitting in a cookie tin in the cupboard, a taste sensation. Frozen cookies, a cold, chewy delight. In our house, cookies don’t have the opportunity to grow stale, but I see no reason to believe I wouldn’t find stale cookies tasty too.  The softer and richer they are, the better.

In my world, cookies are like potato chips:  you simply cannot stop at one.

Perhaps by now you’ve guessed that I’m what you might call (ahem) a “hearty eater.”

Take a person whose favourite activity in life, bar none, is reading – and who loves to eat, with both a penchant for fine food and an untamed sweet tooth – and you have the ingredients for disaster. In actual fact, though, due to some odd (and undoubtedly lifesaving) quirk in my metabolism, I do not weigh nine hundred pounds. I’m no featherweight, to be sure, but if my weight reflected my actual food intake, they’d be hauling me around with a crane.

Cute holiday cookies

Furthermore, it’s a source of constant wonderment to me that I, who dislike cooking to approximately the same degree that I enjoy eating, have somehow produced a family of amazing cooks, who themselves married amazing cooks. Wonderful meals and delicious sweets flow from their talented hands at a truly mind-bending rate.

Notice of an upcoming family gathering produces an avalanche of culinary delights, as each of my wonderful children and their spouses attempts to make up for the fact that Mama, because of some weird genetic anomaly, does not enjoy producing tempting goodies the way they do.

They outdid themselves again this year; and as a result, we were treated to a virtual cornucopia of colours and tastes at our annual family Christmas Eve gathering last weekend, to which I added my own cookie offerings and happily settled in to do credit to all that good food.

I soon bypassed my FULL button (to be honest, I’m not sure I have one of those, but I’m told that people do), slowed down only momentarily at my STOP button, and then hurled myself full tilt toward my EXPLODE button.

I think I might have overdone it just a titch this holiday season, because I can’t help but notice that I’m beginning to bear a certain resemblance to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (can we spell Ghostbusters?) these days.

Stay Puft Marshmallow Man

Is it possible that, at my advanced age, all those years of culinary intemperance are catching up with me?  Damn!

Ah well.  It goes without saying that tomorrow, in a rite as predictable as New Year’s celebrations, I’ll once again be making a resolution list for 2017.  At the top of that list will be an item that seems to have pride of place on my yearly lists:  LOSE WEIGHT.

Yet again, I’ll swear to wean myself down to respectable portions on my plate and cut out sweets entirely until I can wrestle my sweet tooth back into some semblance of control.

Which means, of course, no more cookies.

Sigh….

More cute holiday cookies

P.S.  As noted, the goodies shown here are not mine, sad to say.  Mine will be the cake that slopes gently to one side, or the cookies that have sprawled across the baking tin like clumps of amoebas, in spite of my every careful attempt to create perfect rounds. “Attractive” is not an adjective that will ever be applied to my baking.

Giant amoeba resembling one of my cookies

P.P.S.  In the interest of complete disclosure and transparency, I will admit that I might exaggerate, just a bit, from time to time.

Happy New Year, one and all!
Love,
Susannah