More Holiday Food? Yes.
Dec. 18th, 2022 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigidChristmas is next week and we have the tree up but the only decorations are lights and garland. I like to take it slow and easy when it comes to tree decoration. I've put hooks on a bunch of the ornaments so all I have to do is haul myself up and off the couch and hang them but instead of sitting around drinking coffee and considering busting out some anise-flavored cookies to go with said coffee.
My kid enjoys chocolate but doesn't consider it "candy" and gets upset when the only "Halloween candy" they get is chocolate. So I'm looking around trying to find "Christmas candy" that isn't chocolate AND isn't peppermint because they don't enjoy peppermint either. Regular ass candy canes sit around literally all year without being eating unless one of us has a stomach ache or wants peppermint hot chocolate or something. I've given up on candy canes on the tree... at least, traditional peppermint candy canes. We get jolly rancher or sour patch kids or whatever flavored candy canes. And because I enjoy the white and red stripes of a peppermint candy cane I've started getting hand crafted glass ones from actual human beings who blow glass. They are beautiful. Thank you, Etsy.
There has been Discussion in my house about What Christmas Cookies To Make, If Any. Kid wants sugar cut out cookies, which I hate making but will do for them because I love them more than life itself and also I don't want them to put me in a shitty old folks home when I hate 85. I only have one kid which means this basket right here only has one egg in it.
ANYWAY, sugar cut out cookies. I work from home on Wednesday which means I don't have an hour long commute, which means I can use that hour to make cookies with them. My kitchen is absolute ASS so we'll have to roll out the cookies on the dining room table. I am not looking forward to that. But, again, that's what parenting is: making a big mess and hurting your back while doing so.
I've run down other cookie options with my husband, and am going to make turtle bar cookies (also called millionaire shortbread but look, it's shortbread topped with caramel, pecans, and chocolate - it's turtles all the way down). I have those chocolate drop cookies that are dead easy to make and I should make more often, I'll probably make those. And possibly snickerdoodles although I'm the only one in the family who really enjoys them. There's peanut butter cookies with chocolate in the center... for the past several years I've used hershey kisses, but Back In The Day I used Brach chocolate stars which are incredibly hard to find now. There's those chocolate cookies that crackle and you sift powdered sugar over them. There's thumbprint cookies that I make using a friend's recipe that are utterly amazing and perfect and time consuming as hell. Spritz cookies. There's so many options!!!
But I'm also thinking of making my grandmother's fudge.
My grandmother was many things - a teacher, specializing in what now would be considered special ed but back then didn't really have a name; a Union organizer heavily involved in forming the Chicago Teacher's Union; a communist; a single mom; and an excellent cook/baker.
She got the recipe from a friend, the friend's name listed on the top of the little piece of paper she wrote the recipe on. I wrote that name down, too, and sometimes do a search for her online to see if anyone's ever mentioned her. I've never found her. The fudge recipe is one that I never saw online, either. It involves marshmallow creme, but not in a way I'd seen other recipes call for. I posted it on my blog a few years ago and recently... I've found that recipe on various cooking blogs, sometimes with instructions very similar to the ones I wrote. And, you know, there's only so many ways to describe stirring something. But it feels weird. And any sites that may have lifted the recipe from mine? They sure didn't credit the woman my grandmother got the recipe from, a woman mentioned by her husband's name and not her own. And that feels kind of like a special kind of betrayal, that she's been erased in every possible way. And, hey, maybe she got the recipe from a newspaper and passed it on and wasn't the person who originated it, or maybe my grandma got the recipe from a newspaper and noted the name of the woman who submitted the recipe. I don't know. But it still feels like erasure.
And eating that fudge tastes like Christmas.
My kid enjoys chocolate but doesn't consider it "candy" and gets upset when the only "Halloween candy" they get is chocolate. So I'm looking around trying to find "Christmas candy" that isn't chocolate AND isn't peppermint because they don't enjoy peppermint either. Regular ass candy canes sit around literally all year without being eating unless one of us has a stomach ache or wants peppermint hot chocolate or something. I've given up on candy canes on the tree... at least, traditional peppermint candy canes. We get jolly rancher or sour patch kids or whatever flavored candy canes. And because I enjoy the white and red stripes of a peppermint candy cane I've started getting hand crafted glass ones from actual human beings who blow glass. They are beautiful. Thank you, Etsy.
There has been Discussion in my house about What Christmas Cookies To Make, If Any. Kid wants sugar cut out cookies, which I hate making but will do for them because I love them more than life itself and also I don't want them to put me in a shitty old folks home when I hate 85. I only have one kid which means this basket right here only has one egg in it.
ANYWAY, sugar cut out cookies. I work from home on Wednesday which means I don't have an hour long commute, which means I can use that hour to make cookies with them. My kitchen is absolute ASS so we'll have to roll out the cookies on the dining room table. I am not looking forward to that. But, again, that's what parenting is: making a big mess and hurting your back while doing so.
I've run down other cookie options with my husband, and am going to make turtle bar cookies (also called millionaire shortbread but look, it's shortbread topped with caramel, pecans, and chocolate - it's turtles all the way down). I have those chocolate drop cookies that are dead easy to make and I should make more often, I'll probably make those. And possibly snickerdoodles although I'm the only one in the family who really enjoys them. There's peanut butter cookies with chocolate in the center... for the past several years I've used hershey kisses, but Back In The Day I used Brach chocolate stars which are incredibly hard to find now. There's those chocolate cookies that crackle and you sift powdered sugar over them. There's thumbprint cookies that I make using a friend's recipe that are utterly amazing and perfect and time consuming as hell. Spritz cookies. There's so many options!!!
But I'm also thinking of making my grandmother's fudge.
My grandmother was many things - a teacher, specializing in what now would be considered special ed but back then didn't really have a name; a Union organizer heavily involved in forming the Chicago Teacher's Union; a communist; a single mom; and an excellent cook/baker.
She got the recipe from a friend, the friend's name listed on the top of the little piece of paper she wrote the recipe on. I wrote that name down, too, and sometimes do a search for her online to see if anyone's ever mentioned her. I've never found her. The fudge recipe is one that I never saw online, either. It involves marshmallow creme, but not in a way I'd seen other recipes call for. I posted it on my blog a few years ago and recently... I've found that recipe on various cooking blogs, sometimes with instructions very similar to the ones I wrote. And, you know, there's only so many ways to describe stirring something. But it feels weird. And any sites that may have lifted the recipe from mine? They sure didn't credit the woman my grandmother got the recipe from, a woman mentioned by her husband's name and not her own. And that feels kind of like a special kind of betrayal, that she's been erased in every possible way. And, hey, maybe she got the recipe from a newspaper and passed it on and wasn't the person who originated it, or maybe my grandma got the recipe from a newspaper and noted the name of the woman who submitted the recipe. I don't know. But it still feels like erasure.
And eating that fudge tastes like Christmas.
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Date: 2022-12-19 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-20 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-22 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-23 04:46 am (UTC)Growing up my mom was a big food present person so she’d do loads of fudge and basically homemade Skor bars. Which is expensive and time consuming so we actually got very little of it.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-23 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-23 06:51 am (UTC)As for cookies, I am doing the usual Traditional stuff, but this year, I found a recipe for lemon crinkle cookies that I want to try. Because I also enjoy trying to fit more things in my fridge when it is stuffed full (the dough needs to be refrigerated before baking).