Cookies

[altivo]

Gary's been baking cookies for two days. For at least 20 years we've made up boxes of cookies for relatives and close friends. I used to spend hours and hours baking, but he has taken over much of it in recent years. There are two signature recipes that are mine, though, and he hasn't really attempted them yet. One is a ginger molasses cookie that must be rolled out and cut with old-fashioned cookie cutters. I have a huge collection of cutters, from my mother and both my grandmothers. Most of them never get used any more, but at Christmas the bell, star, and angel see regular duty. The other is a shortbread recipe made with enough butter to clog your arteries for a whole year, terrible stuff but it tastes sooo good. I need to make at least the gingerbread tonight.

Weather is weighing down heavily on the midwest. It has been snowing hard since early this morning, drifting in the wind, making travel very hazardous. The temperature is rising out of the deep freeze levels we were at Sunday and Monday, but rising too much. The snow could turn into ice and freezing rain by morning, which is going to make travel disastrously dangerous. We need to go into Chicago tomorrow and come back out... and I haven't even wrapped the packages yet.

OK, enough complaining. Go get it done...