A Polish girl was seen singing "O moj rozmarynie" to a sprig of rosemary while making dinner on 4 August.
In Lydia's post, she said that there would be posts coming up of cookie baking and presents et cetera. So, here goes: Fire ahead! We're all listening!
O, very well, I will have to start at the beginning: We have a tradition of taking off two days before Christmas Eve to make cookies all together. We make thousands and thousands to give away in cookie plates. This year, however, we only started a day late and overlapped into Christmas Eve.
We always make the same 25 kinds and we all have our certain jobs. For instance, Lydia always makes the Lemon Bars, I always make the Magi Bars, Josiah always makes the Spritz and Pizzelles. (This year Dad did the Pizzelles because Josiah was ill.) And it is customary to listen to Christmas music while working. And now I think I have answered your second question too. (Excuse the Hobbit references; I just finished reading it for the fourth or fifth time.)
This is me looking at Minas Tirith made of butter sticks. 'Tis customary to take out pounds and pounds of butter to soften in the sun before using and helpful citizens make towers and cities and whatnot.
Here is the sweetest little cookie tinner you ever saw putting away the macaroons. (Will anybody notice if I eat one?)
Official cookie counter: Jonathan carefully records the name and number of each kind of cookie in the list ' Annals of the cookies and rulers'. Also he proclaims loudly the net gains or losses from last year's cookie count. (Count every cookie, every cookie counts).
Lydia rolled all the doughs this year- Piskota, Sugar Cookies, Gingerbread and more! And I mean LOTS more!!!!! (Yes, lots! No, none at all!)
More Lord of the Rings references in store for you: This is an amazing sculpture of Mount Doom out of some kind of cookie dough with peppermint meltaway balls awaiting the oven in the background. RUMBLE RUMBBLE RUMMMMMMBLE! KABOOM! BOOM! BOOM! KABOOOOOOOOM!
Anna proudly displays a palantir of Chocolate Treasure dough to Jonathan who promptly references the Movie somehow. (I cannot tell you how, for I haven't seen the Movie yet.)(I will not say what I think it was.)
One of Saruman's orcs! Yikes! Don't worry, it's really just Jonathan with a powdered sugar White Hand of Anna's doing.
Well anyways, back to the cookies. Here is Us Girls making gingerbread men. You've seen this picture before in Lydia's post. (This is Sting. You have seen it before). We always give some of the gingerbread houses round doors to look like hobbit holes.
Here is the Pepparkakor Pig! Pepperkakor dough is supposed to be cut out in pig shapes (according to The Children of Noisy Village), but since we didn't have a pig cutter Mother just sculpted a pig instead. Instead we make the pepparkakor into hearts like Pippi; we do make hundreds of them but we do not roll them out on the floor for dear life.
The day ended and we were STILL making cookies...............
So as the night wore on we got into reciting poetry as we worked. All together we rambled off well known poems, like "The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea green boat", "Gil Galad was an elven king", "I must go down to the sea again", or we went as far as we could go in unmemorized stuff like "The leaves were long the grass was green" or " The Assyrians came down like a wolf in the fold". Here I am reciting "An elven maid there was of old, A shining star by day..." while frosting peppermint meltaways.
Around Midnight we had heaps upon heaps of cookies but we still hadn't made all the kinds so we went to bed wearily...............
To awake next morning, Christmas Eve, refreshed and ready to continue. Here Dad and Kateri undertake the huge job of frosting all the Gingerbread.
The Hungarian Pastry: Note how some of the prune filling dollops resemble animals- for instance, bison, penguins, skunks and seals.
And last of all is this sweet little Gingerbread chef holding up her work and grinning in the most darling way.
So ends the tale of how we made 3380 1/2 cookies and had lots of jolly fun in the meantime. Goodbye!..."Goodbye now, and really Goodbye! Be good, take care of yourselves and above all-DON"T LEAVE THE PATH!"
posted by Mary Rose