My Grandma's Christmas Cookies

2 cups sugar 
1 cup shortening
3 eggs 
1 cup sour milk 
1 teaspoon vanilla  
2 teaspoons baking powder 
1 teaspoon baking soda 
5 cups flour 
1 1/4 teaspoons nutmeg   

Combine sugar, shortening, and eggs.  Add sour milk, and vanilla.  Sift in flour, baking soda, baking powder, and nutmeg.  Chill overnight. 

 

Roll out on well-floured surface and cut with cookie cutter. 

For filled cookies, use 1 teaspoon filling between 2 cookies (see recipes below), and seal edges with warm water before placing on ungreased cookie sheet.  For unfilled cookies, just bake on ungreased cookie sheet, and then decorate cooled cookies with icing (see below).  Bake at 350. 

Raisin Filling:  Combine 1 pound raisins with 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 teaspoon mace, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, and 1 cup water.  Bring to boil and thicken with a little cornstarch.                                                                         

Date Filling:  Combine 1 pound chopped dates with 1/2 cup sugar and 1 cup water.  Bring to boil.                                                                           

Icing:  Beat 1/4 pound butter with 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla, 3 cups confectioners sugar, and approximately 1/2 cup milk.  Put into separate little dishes and add different color of food coloring to each dish to decorate cooled, unfilled cookies.

 

 

My grandma made these cookies every year when I was a child, and I have made them every year since I have been grown.

Balloon head-gear is optional.

 

 

 

 

Napping while the dough chills is optional.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Burning your arm when removing the cookies from the oven is optional.

 

 

 

 

 

Flouring the dog is optional.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Men and boys will definitely paint cookies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because they taste EXACTLY like Christmas!

The Christmas Season Begins at my house

I did go back to bed this morning.  I had woken up with that Aquinas quote in my head twice before I actually got up and posted it.  Go figure.  Then I read a few items in my Multiply InBox, posted a couple replies, and finally did just go back to bed for another three hours.

Went to church this morning.  First Sunday of Advent for those of us who follow the ancient Liturgical Church Year.  In my congregation, the tradition for the First Sunday of Advent is for all the women and children to go in and sit, but all the men from 9th grade to 90 years old come in together following the cross and singing "Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel" -- and this sounds WONDERFUL! They sing 3 verses on their way in.  As they get to the front, they bow to the cross, which has preceded them in, and then they hang out around the sides of the sanctuary.  On verse 4, they don't sing but the women and children do for verses 4 and 5, while the men find their places in the pews.  Verse 6 everybody sings. 

I gotta tell you, though, I love to hear the men singing!  My congregation is quite into singing anyway.  Sometimes we all sing a capella and it's a little like a huge organized choir.  I guess that's because of our Day School.  All our children learn to read music, so that by the time they are grown up, they can sing just fine in church or anywhere.

When church was over this morning it was SNOWING dreadfully!  I had to stop and buy milk on the way home.  Now I've got the week's laundry started.  The photo above is the violets in my dining room and the snow falling out the sliding glass door behind them.

This is what my comfort-seeking cocker spaniel thinks of winter:

She is laying on the heat register.  She just got her hair cut yesterday, and so she has a holiday bow in her ear.  She is pretty, and she knows it.  She has learned to actually pose for me when I want to take her picture.

Friday we put up the tree:

And this afternoon my son is (I hope) off to Great Clips to get a haircut.

Here is a photo of the tree, fully assembled and decked out:

The dog assumes the photo is intended to be of herself, and so she is posing.

Christmas Decorations

Some of my friends here have posted their decorations.  I have instructions stored somewhere on my hard drive for how to put multiple photos into blogs.  But I'm too tired to look at them right now, so I'll just post this one photo.

My mother made both the tree and the nativity figurines a number of years ago.  She was really into ceramics before she moved south.  Even had her own kiln.  These are my favorite decorations.

 

In addition to staying online WAY too long tonight ...

I am eating WAY too many of these Christmas cookies:

They are so yummy!

My grandma's recipe.  And probably her grandma's before her.

They taste exactly like Christmas.