The Cookie Index

Week before last, I ran into a co-worker at Kroger. As I said hello, she was scanning some foil-wrapped chocolates at self-checkout. She started to explain that German tradition requires a celebration of St. Nicholas Day on December 6. I told her my kids' school was hosting a German Christmas market on Saturday, and that she should come. She knew about it already and said she would be there.

The Christmas market is hosted by the parent organization representing the families of the kids in the German track at the school; some of the families are German, and others, like us, just have children who study German at the school. Over the years, we've done different things to help out. One year we did crafts with the kids of the volunteers working at the market, and a few years ago I made an angel costume that was worn by a student who posed with small children for Christmas photos (like having pictures taken with Santa, in the United States). Last year I made cookies for sale by the parents' group at the market.

When I signed up to make cookies last year, I think I expected that I would - I don't know - make one batch of chocolate chip cookies using the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag, and that would be it. So I was somewhat surprised to be assigned one of 7 traditional German Christmas cookie recipes and to be told I needed to make three batches of them. The kids helped and we rolled and cut and baked cookies one evening, packed them into the required cookie tins (the detailed instructions specified storage and transport in cookie tins, not in plastic containers), and turned them in a day or two before the Christmas market. There they were combined with cookies made by other families and packaged on a small paper plate, wrapped with cellophane and tied with ribbon, and sold at the market for $5. I bought two or three packages of them last year; I think we gave one package away and ate the rest of them. They were very good, and a nice variety, even if there weren't any chocolate chip cookies.

But last year, as I recall there were a lot of cookies that went unsold - I think they might have ended up in the teachers' lounge at the school. So I thought that this massive cookie-making effort might be scaled back a little this year, to try to come closer to matching supply and demand. But I was wrong - when the instructions came, they were planning an even larger cookie-making effort, and had plans to package some of the cookies in tins that would sell for more than the small packages that had been sold before. This seemed highly optimistic to me, but I just did as I was instructed.

So I was up til 1 a.m. one night the week before last, making cookies. They got combined with all the other cookies and packaged up at a massive cookie-packaging-event the morning before the market, and were for sale at the event last Saturday afternoon. It was a beautiful afternoon. There was the photo station, with a girl in the angel costume and this year with Santa too, and little kids posing for photos. There was grilled bratwurst and potato salad, and the German church had desserts of various sorts. A German bakery had stollen, and there were lots of stalls with other things for sale, too.

We ate bratwurst off styrofoam plates and Iain stood in line with other kids at the table where the desserts were for sale. I saw my co-worker who I'd run into a Kroger. Tom and I looked at the used books (in German) and browsed the crafts for sale. By the time I made it back to the table where our cookies were for sale, the small packages were all gone. I bought a tin for $15, and I'm glad a didn't wait any longer, because it wasn't much later that the cookies had been sold.

I don't know who made the decision to make more cookies this year, but they were right and I was wrong. Of course, I haven't seen any foreclosure signs in the neighborhood for a while and there's a new restaurant about to open in Caramba's old location on North Highland (okay, it's yet another burger place, but still...).

Finally, things may be getting better. It's about time.

The Holiday Report

With work and the holidays, I have not had any time for the last month or so – so no updates. Not that we aren’t here, and not that things haven’t been happening. So here is a partial summary of what’s been going on for the last month or so.

The Women of Wessyngton Road met at Lynsley’s and then walked up to Caramba Café for the traditional celebration of the Winter Solstice (that would be drinking Margaritas).

Another house on Wessyngton Road has been leveled, next to the Large House that is Architecturally Different from Adjacent Houses (LHADAH) that has been completed and on the market for the last several months. They had had a notice up that one or more trees were going to be removed, and sometime before Christmas a huge bile of magnolia branches appeared at the curb. Some were salvaged by neighbors, no doubt for holiday decorations - I would have done so myself if I were organized enough. Now, if another LHADAH is built on this lot, then there will be three of them in a row - this one, the one that is already finished, and the one that is still under construction. Does that mean that technically the one in the middle will no longer be an LHADAH?

Christmas morning started with cooking, then present-opening at Kathy and Steve's with Angela, and then later in the morning at our house. Tom got me a radar gun, which is a totally fabulous Christmas present. We went out later in the day looking for moving cars to point it out but it being Christmas Day, there weren't many of them. So we went to Haygood with a load of corrogated cardboard for recycling and took the gun with us. A little kid with a new bike was already in the parking lot there. I did get to clock a couple of cars on East Rock Springs, no doubt to the puzzlement of a couple of drivers who wondered about the crazy woman standing on the curb with the hairdryer. But they did slow down.

We ended up with more people for Christmas dinner than for Thanksgiving. Fred made it for Christmas dinner, as did Angela's former mother-in-law and a friend of Angela's, as well as Angela herself. Fewer leftovers than at Thanksgiving, as I had a better idea of how much 8 or 9 or 10 people would actually eat. We did have gingerbread people, who had what Caroline described as "scary" chocolate-chip eyes.

We went the Washington, D.C., the week after Christmas, and while we were gone one of the rats made a break for it. This would be one of Sarah's pet rats that lives in the cage in an upstairs bathroom, not an unwelcome visiting-from-outdoors kind of rat. This particular rat had escaped once before and had several exciting days living behind the washing machine before being recaptured and returned to the cage. There were many sightings over the several days following our return home - it would emerge from the space between the washing machine and the dryer, only to retreat if we made a move for it - but eventually we were able to recapture it when we found it on top of the cage, presumably updating its former cage mates about life on the run. (That's often how fugitives are caught - they just can't stay away from family and friends.)

During the month of December, a fair amount of effort was expended to make Christmas cards. Several years ago I got a silkscreen kit for Christmas that has since been used to make several different kinds of T-shirts but we never had tried the photoemulsion technique. So Tom worked on that - we did manage to get a usable screen for the drawing for the front (two different designs, one from each daughter) but the screen for the printing inside didn't come out as well, despite a couple of efforts. So we have blank cards. I did print them, but they are still sitting in a pile on the dining room table (which, by the way, still has the extra leaves we put in it for Christmas dinner). My rule is if you get the cards out by Martin Luther King's birthday, they aren't really late. But that would be this weekend, so I guess I need to get started.