Christmas Cookies

This is the week when normally I would be baking Christmas cookies.  I've baked Christmas cookies since before we were married.  When I worked at the Physics Department, I would stay up late at night making dozens of types of cookies to take to the office and put out for anybody in the department to come and taste.  I did that for two years.

Then, of course, when we were raising the family, I always made Christmas cookies, for us and for Santa and it was nice to have baskets of cookies to take to friends or neighbors the week before the holiday.  I loved it that the house always smelled of cookies.  

My mother made what she called "Goodness Sake cookies," a recipe she got at a party she attended.  It wasn't until years later that I realized these were Mexican wedding cakes which it seems pretty much everyone makes at this time of year.  It's my favorite cookie and I can probably eat an entire recipe by myself.

I watch a lot of Food Network shows, especially at this time of the year, and have been watching cookie challenges and marveling at the wonderful thing that the cooks are doing with simple cookie dough.

Sadly, with my current eating regimen, there are no cookies to be made.  I could make a batch of cookies and convince myself I was going to give them away, but I'm really the only big cookie eater around here and I know I'd eat most of them and my blood sugar would fly off the roof. I can't remember the last time I had any real sugar.

Without the smell of cookies and boxes to give to neighbors for the holiday (or leave out for Santa), and especially because nobody is going to be here on Christmas day (though Tom et al. will be here a couple of days later), it just doesn't feel like Christmas.