12/01/2005

Good Grief!!

The Thanksgiving pies are now history, having served as breakfast since the big day. The last one to go was the mince pie which is Phils favorite. This means that I need to prepare more pie crust dough toward Christmas baking, and stash them in the freezer, thereby allowing me the luxury of making pies easily, any time the need arises. The days are flying by so quickly that I
just realized the BIG HOLIDAYS are on the way.

December has arrived, and I am not sure where November went! I remember reading a Maurice Sendak book to my children that contained a command that seems to fit this time of year--not a direct quote: Let the wild rumpus begin! Cards to address, house to decorate, tree to purchase, tree to decorate, wreaths to make and hang, on and an. Oh, and lots of house guests.

Which brings me to the subject of cooking. One of the things that I have done to help simplify this area of preparation is to gather all the recipes that I will be using into a folder, which cuts down on last minute searching. If you are completely organized you may already have your recipes in a computer file, however I do not qualify as completely organized, and the computer is a relatively new friend of mine., so my recipes are in various books, as well as on paper.

The next thing I do is to make a list of all the ingredients that I will need and shop for all of the
ingredients that are non-perishable. Again, this is so that when I am putting together dough for ginger cookies, I indeed have ginger on the shelf.

As a young mother one of the things that I did was to prepare many different cookie doughs and freeze them for baking when I had the time. { Carefully label each packet of dough with the name of the cookie, # of cookies to expect, as well as baking instructions.} This worked out well, because I could remove the dough from the freezer in the morning and while the children were napping I could bake cookies without interruption. I would bake the cookies that were "good keepers" first and the butter cookies last, and in between I would put together trays of cookies for my friends and neighbrs to enjoy. One year sticks in my mind because I kept track of how many dozen cookies I made and the grand total was 112 dozen! WHEW!!

In the coming days my daughter and I will be baking all kinds of goodies so that we will be prepared for visits from friends in a week or so. That weekend we will travel out into the boonies to purchase our tree, from the same tree farm that we have been going to for thirty years. Of course when the kids were young we marched around fields of trees searching for the "BEST" one, and then Phil would saw it down. We usually brought a thermos of hot chocolate {home made} so that we could work up the steam required to drag the tree out of the field. The next job was getting the tree tied to the roof of our car, and away we would go, all rosy cheeked
and happy.

My wish for you is to be surrounded by friends and family, sharing memories, making new ones, and simply enjoying life. Check in every now and then to see what is going on at my house. Talk to you soon.