holidaze

Busy. Nutty busy. Two classes' grades down, two to go. Yip.

But it's not just the grade-a-thon-a-rama. It's...

Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things

47. Christmas cookies. I just love 'em.

My family always made Christmas cookies in tremendous variety and quantity. One year I believe we made something like 15 dozen cookies: sugar cookies, molasses cookies, press cookies, cherry-coconut bars, lemon bars, waffle cookies, macaroons. It was nuts. We had Christmas cookies until Easter.

We've made the sugar and molasses cookies each year we've been together. The molasses are my favorites, because they're unique and because it's the kind of cookie dough that leads to storytelling, chiefly because it's hard to make the dough without breaking a spoon. I've literally broken spoons stirring in the flour, because the dough needs to be that stiff.

This year I broke all tradition by mixing buckwheat flour into the dough. The taste is different in that nutty, woody buckwheat way, and it makes the molasses taste just a bit darker. We've been icing and decorating them, but no pictures are available, because these things must be kept secreted in undisclosed locations for the sake of national security.

No one knows why.