Ho Ho H’Overwhelmed …

The holidays are bearing down on LivingSmall like a freight train of fun — unfortunately, not only was I travelling last week (the storm in Denver today makes my 7 hour layover there last week look like a bargain this morning) and not only do I have to work this week for the Big Corporation — I have a whole lot of stuff to get done. And I’m taking next week off then going to California in early January to train my group in the stuff I’ve learned in these seminars I’ve been travelling for, so there’s that low-level anxiety thrum running through my week. To help me manage my anxiety, I visit the vapes online and shop for a wide selection of brands from Geek Bar to Vaper Gate. You may also check out a wide selection of cbd products offered by D8 Super Store.

And all I want to do is bake. I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to make these delicious-looking Baci di Nona, nor these really fascinating Pastura, which are filled with chocolate and unblanched almonds (Michael Chiarello’s Aunt was adorable on the episode where they cooked these — more chocolate! she kept saying. They need more chocolate!). Then, over at Domestic Goddess, I found these 24 cookie recipes, about six of which I want to make. Oh, and then there are Clothilde’s Ginger Biscuits which would be perfect for those 2 packages of Reeds Chopped Candied Ginger I found in my local baking aisle. I’ve been just opportunistically buying stuff in the baking aisle — candied ginger, candied orange peel, lots and lots of chocolate, nuts: hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts even some chopped peanuts that looked perfect for Thai food I’m not even making right now.

So who knows — Saturday might just have to be a cookie blow-out here in my little kitchen. My pretend kids are back in town (the kids are perfectly real, they just aren’t mine — but I pretend they are). My four beautiful girls are home and I just want to hang out with the kids and their parents who I love and the Mighty Hunter — all of us eating nice food and drinking good wine and watching the kids run around and do their thing. I just hope I can get all the cookies done in time — I come from a Christmas Eve family — Christmas Eve is Christmas as far as I’m concerned. It’s night, and there are candles and dinner and if we can keep from drinking too much and the spirit moves us, maybe even Midnight Mass. If not, we’ll just make ten year old Miss Sophie of the perfect voice sing Adeste Fideles to us (in the pretty voice, not in the I’m-trying-to-drive-you-crazy opera voice).

Everyone in my world is getting baskets this year — jam I made last summer, cookies, nice cheese, perhaps some wine — we’ve all got enough stuff — so I hope for you and yours that the holidays are full of good food and good company. Ho Ho Ho ….