It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

No, really, it's not.

Yeah, it really is!

I swear I'm bi-polar.

I love the season, the lights, the decorations, the baking, the music - I loathe the shopping, gift receiving, make-nice-to-relatives-I-don't-like parts.

I'm half Scrooge, half Martha Stewart this time of year. Thank the beybey Jebus for rum punch and the internet for shopping ~ or am I'm supposed to thank Al Gore for the internet? Well, thanks to whomever came up with online shopping. You deserve a Nobel for that. If I have to step foot into a store between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day people will die. Slowly, painful, damning commercialism, Santa Claus and me to Hell in the process.

Not that I would care. Hell, I'd probably love every minute of it.

My sister has organized a cookie baking soirée for Saturday night. My contribution to this cookie extravaganza will be my peanut butter cookies and cherry and white chocolate chip cookies (see below). How all six of us, the draftee's, are going to do this in a two oven kitchen is beyond me - we're usually more spread out. As long as there is rum punch and my Kitchen Aide I really won't care too much.

The Italian tradition of baking a gadzillion cookies each December, just to give them away in anticipation of receiving the exact same cookies from someone else, was new to me in the early 90's after Dad had remarried. Bizarre, even. I love to cook so I was willing to join in even though this whole process didn't make a lot of sense to me. If you are going to get the same type of cookies back, why not just keep the one's you've baked? That is not the point, however.

The difference between the Anglo-Irish families and Italian families is a lot like the differences between cats and dogs. Cats are aloof, cold, independent creatures. Dogs are affectionate, familial, pack creatures. The Italian stepfamily, also known as La Familia, is an extremely large pack of friendly dogs. Being one of the Cat People I found this pack of dogs to be very strange in the beginning. But there are cats who actually like dogs, who will elect to spend some of their time in the pack, though usually only on the fringes, with the most cat-like dogs available. That's me. La Familia, being of the accepting dog nature, let me do this. I weave my way in and out of Familia gatherings, sticking to the fringes, only to disappear from time to time. There's only so much affection and attention a cat can take, afterall.

So this Saturday night will be one of the nights I choose to participate. Cookie baking with my sister, Mom, one sister-in-law (who is Irish and was just as floored by this family as I was) and three of my nieces. The numbers are dwindling each year. In the past there were several kitchens around Fairfield county baking like crazy and the people in them telephoning each other with comments and questions on recipes. I think the phone rang more often than the timers went off. It also used to take all night but now it's just around six hours. In between mixing ingredients and getting trays in and out of the ovens we decorate the house to the sounds of Christmas music. Dad, being a Cat Person as well as a Scrooge, hides on the porch watching CNN and reading and hollering every hour or so "aren't you done yet?"

"We'll be done when we're done, you grumpy old man", I'll bark at him.

Mom will enquire if he's tired, if we're too loud, if he needs anything and generally just fuss about him like he's Santa Claus or the beybey Jebus. She'll tell us to quiet down, hurry up, then ask Dad, again, if he's okay, does he need anything... not that he answered her the first time. She'll make him some tea and bring him some cookies and he'll complain about how long this stupid process is taking and I'll tell him to shut his gob and eat his damn cookies.

And Dad will smile and eat his damn cookies and complain to no one in particular what bratty kid he's got. Mom will respond, "Well, your Mother always said she's just like you."

La famiglia è il mondo intero.

Cherry and white chocolate chip cookies:

For this recipe you will need a very sturdy hand mixer or a Kitchen Aide.

The ingredients are:

1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs
1 teaspoons of vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups of flour, well sifted
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 package of white chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups of dried cherries
1 cup of cashews, coarsely chopped

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line up your baking trays and line them with Silpats if you have them.

In a large bowl, place the butter, both sugars, eggs and vanilla. Cream the ingredients together using either a hand mixer or a Kitchen-Aide at a medium speed for several minutes. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking soda and mix them together well. Slowly add the add flour mixture to butter mixture until both are well combined. Next, stir in white chocolate chips, the dried cherries and the cashews. Spoon a tablespoon of cookie dough into your hands and roll into a ball. You should get 16 small balls on each baking tray. Bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes, or until they are a light, golden brown. Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack quickly. This recipe should make about 4 dozen cookies.