Christmas Memories past and present

There is this cookie called a chocolate pinwheel. You need to find a cookie book from the nineteen-sixties called Betty Crocker Cooky book. In it are loads of cookie recipes. There is even a cookie that is just butter and chocolate. You take graham cracker crumbs top them with butter and chocolate. No wander there is an obesity crisis. I made it once, it was wonderful. In this cookie book is a recipe called Chocolate Pin wheels.

 It has nothing to do with Christmas, the three wise men didn't eat them as they crossed the dessert, and god didn't send them to the Israelites as they wandered through the dessert. But, I only make them at Christmas and only eat them before Christmas. Some how they have become my Christmas Cookie. I remember my mom making them during the holidays along with several other cookies with longer memories and others with better tastes. I love Chocolate Chip cookies better. I remember making roll out cookies when younger and I have eaten cookie press cookies for ever.
   The Classic Cooky Book by Betty Crocker was first printed in the early nineteen-sixties. On the inside cover my mom wrote the recipe for the roll out cookies that we would make for the first decade of our lives. The cookie press cookies were from the cookie press how to pamphlet.
  There is nothing better about these cookies then other cookies. It is just the memories that come flooding back as you make them. I can remember making cookies, all four of us, yes four kids, all self absorbed in their own lives and wanting to make cookies while their mother tried to keep all of us happy. And yes she did. The roll out cookies were simple. We were each given a blob of dough and some flour and cookie cutters, and oh yes, an empty cookies sheet. You would roll out the dough and use the cookie cutters to shape you treasures. They would be moved to the cookie sheet and lightly brushed with whipped egg white. Then some sprinkles and into the oven they would go. Seven minutes or so later out would come these paper thin or not delicious cookies that you had made.

Christmas trees and stars, rolled too thick become the delicious cookie blob

   Growing up my mom never did this with her family and just like reading to us at night when we were young, no one knows where these ideas came from. they have become family traditions, at least with me or at least I have tried to...
   This is where all that back story above becomes relevant. Yesterday, was Sunday. I had a list of things I wanted to do. Work on the attic, plaster the hall wall, add heat to Amanda's room and I also wanted to make memories with my daughters.
  Saturday, all day Elena and mostly Nastia spent the day playing on x-box live. I don't like them doing that, but I let them. I started making cookies around noon. I called Elena to make some roll out cookie dough. After she was done, we put it in the refrigerator to cool until I could find the cookie cutters. Next Nastia and I make roll out cookie dough and put it in the refrigerator to cool until I found the cookie cutters. I never found them, I must of given them back to my mom. I thought I had bought a box of them and that was why I gave them back. I must of given them back before the girls were even a thought figuring that I would never have a use for them. And I guess I never bought the cookie cutters for the same reason.

Elena being good for Christmas!!

  I searched the house top to bottom and never found them. I went on to other cookies and the girls went back to x-box and an afternoon of memories that I wanted never got too far off the ground.
  I want so much for our girls and there is not enough time to do it. I want memories of us doing things. I want them to remember the time I told them, as I rush up stairs that I heard Santa Claus and they better get to bed and the time I told them about the time I fell asleep in my chair in Nyack on Christmas eve and woke up to find Santa Claus in our house putting present under the tree. What I'm afraid of is they will remember all the times I yelled at them like a manic and said things that I didn't mean. The time is so short before they are completely out of our world and are more interested in their boyfriends and going out to Christmas parties and doing things with their friends then their parents.
   The cookie dough the girls made the other day, Teri insisted in making cookies tonight. Nastia helped, Elena wasn't interested. She watched TV. It is already starting to happen with her.
  It was fun sorta to make cookies. Teri started with Nastia, without me. I walk in and she is using two sheets of wax paper and a rolling pin to smooth the dough. It was a good idea except the dough would of stuck to the cookie cutters. I grabbed a corner of the dough, it was very sticky and I kept adding flour and the cutters would stick and Teri would offer a string of ideas and I'm thinking why is this dough sticking, it was never like this when I was a kid. So I kept adding more and more flour. Teri and Nastia started making the cookies thick and for some reason I knew you should not do that, but could not remember why. So I started making them thick too. It was easier and it worked. When them came out we had created the cookie blob and it was going to take over the world.