FAMILY
Baking Christmas Cookies And Remembering Her
Family and the secrets we carry
I’ve baked my grandmother’s cookie recipes for the past twelve Christmases. It all started one year when my dad baked them for us as a gift. He presented my sister and me with large red tins of cookies. My eyes bugged out when I saw them. And then I ate them. I was hooked.
He gifted us the recipes and a tradition began. Sometimes I wonder if that was his plan all along.
There are a total of nine recipes and I usually add a wild card cookie or two. It is a regular cookie-baking marathon that consumes at least two full days. My dining room becomes an assembly line as I sort them into tins.
I give cookies to my immediate family and also present them to select friends and neighbors. I started shipping them to my husband’s parents a few years ago, and my sister always gets a tin shipped to Connecticut. I’m proud to say my niece and nephew grew up leaving my cookies for Santa.
Grandmother Harriet lived to be 83 and died in the garden apartment of my dad’s 2-flat in Chicago. In later years, she usually fell asleep in a chair in front of the television, and one morning, my dad came down and found her.
