We had a lovely and relaxing day.  How about you???

We’re still trying to clean up all the carnage and get some relaxing in before the New Year and the return to work and school.  Oh and eating cookies.  Lots and lots of cookies.

Do you have any traditions you share each year with your families?

I have mentioned that every year we take the kids on a night-time light- seeing drive around town.  We did that last week.

Tonight, since it’s Christmas Eve, we will watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.  This tradition started many years ago with my parents and we continue it every year.  I think we can all recite the whole dang movie.  And it still makes us laugh out loud.

We also find time every year to watch Elf, A Christmas Story (you’ll shoot your eye out, kid!) The Grinch and The Snowman.  My personal favorite from the time I was young is It’s a Wonderful Life.  But I am very particular about it – it HAS to be the black and white version.

There’s also holiday music playing nearly non – stop this time of year at our house.  I am going out on a limb admitting this, but I am very partial to John Denver’s Rocky Mountain Christmas. We also like Enya’s last two winter albums, and Sarah McLachlan’s Christmas album.  Of course I adore all of the traditional and classical stuff as well, (Nat King Cole!) and Charlie Brown Christmas has been on a constant loop in our truck for weeks now.

One very special cd seems to be rather unknown,however.  Have you heard of Teja Bell?  If I had to pick only one cd to play for Christmas, this would be it.

Tonight I am finishing up my pre-big day baking and whipping up a batch of brioche dough for our annual Pigs In A Blanket smorgasbord.  I make the dough every Christmas Eve, and every Christmas morning, Paul rolls little mini smokies up with it and we eat wonderful little piggies all morning with rum and eggnog.

This year I am also baking Chocolate Cream Pie for dessert.  In fact, I still have plenty to do to get ready for Santa, so I bid you all the loveliest and most peaceful of holidays.  See you on the other side.

Each year I go on a major cookie – baking bender.  True story.  It’s one of our yearly traditions that started when we were first married and hadn’t even begun having children.  Back then it was easier to produce mountains of cookies in a shorter time span, but I still try my best to create a smorgasbord of sugary goodness despite time constraints.

Every year there are specific types of cookies which are a must. These are: Frosted butter cookies, frosted gingerbread cookies, chocolate – dipped macaroons, Rugelach, Linzer cookies, and Florentine cookies.  In addition I try a few new types each year, and sometimes I will throw in some Hamantaschen for good measure.  Those are better suited to Purim than Christmas, however.  This year I am adding in Chocolate-Cherry Mandelbrot and Chocolate-Hazelnut Thumbprints.  I’ll let you know how they all turn out.

In the meantime, for your baking pleasure I am sharing my favorite Rugelach recipe.

Ready?

Ingredients:

8 oz. Cream Cheese, softened

2 1/2 sticks of butter, divided

2 1/4 cups flour

1 cup finely chopped walnuts

1/2 cup sugar

1 TBS cinnamon

Raspberry preserves

2 TBS sugar

First, beat the cream cheese with 2 sticks of softened butter.  You’ll have the best luck doing this if you have a stand mixer; a hand mixer works well, too.  If you’re doing this by hand…..please put “Stand mixer” on your Christmas wish – list.

Once these two are well blended, gradually add the flour.  Once it’s all incorporated, pat it into a nice round disk – shape and wrap it in plastic wrap.  It need to chill in the fridge for about 4 hours (overnight is best; I find 4 hours to be a good minimum).

Once your dough is chilled, remove it from the fridge and separate it into fourths (you will roll out one fourth at a time).  Rolling out can be done two different ways. More on that in a moment.

You’ll need to melt the remaining 1/2 stick of butter in a small dish and set aside.  In another bowl, combine walnuts, 1/2 cup sugar, and 2 tsp of the cinnamon.  In yet another small bowl, combine remaining 1 tsp cinnamon and 2 TBS sugar.  Set these aside, along with your raspberry preserves.

Rugelach can be made by cutting the dough into strips or triangles for crescents.  I find I get more cookies if I cut strips, but crescent – shaped rugelach may be a bit more traditional.  If you want to cut strips, roll out your dough into a rough rectangle shape and cut long strips into it.  Each strip should be roughly 5 – 6 inches long and  about 1 and a half to 2 inches wide.

For crescent cookies, roll your dough into a circle and cut it like a pie to make thin triangles for rolling.

Next is where it can get messy.

Brush each strip of dough with melted butter.  Sprinkle with walnut – cinnamon mixture.  At one end of each strip add a small dollop of preserves, then roll the strip up.

Brush the top of each cookie with more melted butter, and sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar mixture.

Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.  They should be a light golden- brown.

Once you are done baking your cookies, you can plan a Cookie Exchange Party!

I invited my Book Club gals and families for one this year, and all involved had a lovely time.  We are still enjoying the many different cookies brought by all the guests.  (It’s a great way to get a large variety without baking 25 different kinds of cookies!)

Meanwhile, how about these cookies my mother made??? Hand painted Santas and Snowmen!  I think she needs to sell those mail – order, no?????

After being unwell for the past week or so with some sort of low – grade sinus thing I managed to make some house – organizing headway over the weekend while Paul and the kids were in New Jersey for a birthday party (I also did an awful lot of Nyquil – induced heavy sleeping).

There’s still a lot of mess around me and major work still to do, but the big stuff has been started and in some rooms, completed (closet clean – outs anyone??)

Today I was looking forward to getting back into the homeschooling rhythm before continuing the purge and clean.

I knew homeschooling would be a challenge, and I was right, but frankly it’s not even remotely the things I thought I would have trouble with.   Math has been super easy.  Staying on track has been easy.  The tough parts for me have been the little things.

Things like the fact that public school never apparently taught Emily how to properly hold a pen or pencil when she writes and as a result she curls her whole arm and hand around her writing like a lefty, though she is a righty.  Her thumb doesn’t even touch her pen at all.  Her penmanship is rather bad and very slanted.  Teaching her how to properly write has been more difficult that teaching her prime factorization of square roots and fractions.

The amount of time Neve’s lessons take vs. Emily’s is also a surprise.  Emily can work mainly on her own, but Neve needs me to be involved with every.stinking.thing.  Many days I find myself struggling to be sure Emily is getting enough help.

At any rate, aside from a few small issues, it is going very well.

But today.

Oh, today.

I think Oona may be getting sick.  She is all out of sorts and cranky despite a full night’s sleep, and has been WAY over the top today.  That made teaching anyone anything a lesson in extreme rock-solid patience.  By the time noon rolled around I was more than ready for lunch and decided I deserved a treat.  In the form of take out from the new Japanese restaurant that just opened near our house.

I walked out to the car with my hands full (as always).  My habit is to put my “stuff” in the driver’s seat while I get everyone settled and whatnot.

This time, however, there was a booster seat unexpectedly sitting there.  Looking around helplessly for somewhere to put my “stuff and free my hands, I placed my phone, my brand – new ipod Touch (early Xmas present!) and the Netflix movie that needed to be mailed back on the roof of my car.  Can I tell you I never, ever put anything on the roof of my car?  I have two reasons for this.  First, Paul spent a major amount of time and energy putting that paint on my car and I dont’ want to ruin it.   Second, and most importantly, I will forget it’s there.

Anyway I got everything situated properly and we were ready to go!  Visions of California Roll danced in my head.

Then my car decided it didn’t feel like cooperating today.  If I put it in reverse it would lurch hard as though the throttle were stuck wide open.  Same with Drive.  I had to toggle back and forth through the gears a bit before it settled down.  At which point I could tell it wasn’t running properly.  As in really, really rough.

So as I pulled out of the driveway I decided I better tell Paul that it’s time to take the car off the road for an overhaul.

The restaurant was surprisingly nice (it’s hard to have much confidence in food establishments here) and I placed an order for a mixed grill hibatchi lunch, some miso soup and a California Roll.  I paid my tab and reached into my purse to grab my ipod to play with while I waited.

It wasn’t there.

Where was it?

Ah, I left it on the front seat of the car.

Wait.

Did I leave it…….on the roof????????

I started to panic.

I told the hostess that I would be right back and sped the you-know-what out of there.  My car was void of ipod.  Void of phone.  Void of Netflix dvd.

I then pushed my ailing car to its limit and got promptly stuck behind some jerk doing 20 miles under the speed limit on the main road.

All I could think about was my brand new ipod, not even a week old, laying in the road.  Possibly crushed by some car.  Or nabbed by an opportunist stumbling upon it.

And my phone, which I had only recently gotten back to working order.

I was literally hyperventilating by the time I got back to my street.  I was sure I was going to pass out as the world around me began to dim.

And there, in the road…I spotted the lime green case for my ipod.  Ten feet away, the ipod itself.

It looked a little dinged up, but it wasn’t cracked and it still worked perfectly.

About 100 feet away further down the road was the bright red Netflix dvd envelope.  Thankfully it, too was fine.

My phone was not so lucky.  I found it further down still, lying in a ditch with its protective case blown off, battery and cover missing.  It took quite awhile but I eventually located both across the road.

Amazingly, the phone still works fine.

I was still pretty well wound up when I picked up my food and as I made my way back to my parking space to head home I could feel the panic starting to loosen up.  Of course, this meant I needed to get out of public, because once the panic abated it was going to be replaced by sobbing.  Ugly sobbing.

I pulled out of my spot and my back tire collided with a concrete parking spot header jutting out from the next space over (don’t get me started on those pointless car-eaters).

I burst into tears.

The end.