countdown milestone: 100 days until the christmas season!

hip hip hooray! 100 days until the christmas season officially begins!

it's about this time of year when i start to look for christmas magazines to hit the stands.

back with cookies!

welcome august! and with it, a few christmas milestones including

• 100 days until the Christmas Season (Aug 5)
• 3/4 of the way to the Christmas Season (Aug 14)
• 2/3 of the way to Christmas (Aug 25)

Christmas cooking and craft magazines should start hitting the stands later this month, and craft planning in my house has definitely begun.



first let's begin our august celebrations with history of the Christmas cookie

Cakes of all shapes and sizes (including smaller items such as cookies) have been part of festive holiday rituals long before Christmas. Ancient cooks prepared sweet baked goods to mark significant occasions. Many of these recipes and ingredients (cinnamon, ginger, black pepper, almonds, dried fruits etc.) were introduced to Europe in the Middle Ages. They were highly prized and quickly incorporated into European baked goods. Christmas cookies, as we know them today, trace their roots to these Medieval European recipes. Dutch and German settlers introduced cookie cutters, decorative molds, and festive holiday decorations to America. German lebkuchen was probably the first cake/cookie traditionally associated with Christmas. Sugar cookie type recipes descended from English traditions. Did you know Animal crackers began as edible ornaments?

"By the 1500s, Christmas cookies had caught on all over Europe. German families baked up pans of Lebkuchen and buttery Spritz cookies. Papparkakor (spicy ginger and black-pepper delights) were favorites in Sweden; the Norwegians made krumkake (thin lemon and cardamom-scented wafers). The earliest Christmas cookies in America came ashore with the Dutch in the early 1600s."
---"America's Best Holiday Cookies," McCall's [magazine], December 1994 (p. 85)

The flood of cheap imported wares form Germany between 1871 and 1906 when the import laws were changed, inundated our Christmas markets with cooking utensils like...cookie cutters...Unlike homemade counterparts, or local tinsmith's wares, these tools depicted highly stylized images, often frawn from secular themes or...with subjects designed specifically to hang on the Christmas tree. Likewise, recipes appeared in popular cookbooks to better match the demands of such utensils...In a sense, with the advent of inexpensive tin cutters, new emphasis was placed on shape, where in the past, many homemade cookies simply had been square or round. Bells, Christmas trees, camels, crimped wares (cutters with zigzag edges), lilies, Sant Clauses, turkeys, all of these elaborate shapes tended to deemphasize texture and flavor."
---The Christmas Cook: Three Centuries of American Yuletide Sweets, William Woys Weaver [Harper Perennial:New York] 1990 (p. 106)

Merry Christmas Cookies
1/3 cup shortening
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
2/3 cup hone
1 tsp. lemon flavoring
2 3/4 cups Gold Medal Flour
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
Mix shortening, sugar, egg, honey, and flavoring thoroughly. Measure flour by dipping method or by sifting. Stir together flour, soda, salt; blen in. Chill dough. Heat oven to 375 degrees F. (quick mod.). Roll dough out 1/4" thick. Cut into desired shapes (right). Place 1" apart on lightly greased baking sheet. bake 8 to 10 min., or until no imprint remains when touched lightly. When cool, ice and decorate if desired. makes about 5 doz. 2 1/2" cookies.

---Betty Crodker's Cooky Book, General Mills, facsimile 1963 edition [Hungry Minds:New York] 2002 (p. 30)

[source: http://www.foodtimeline.org/christmasfood.html]

christmas in july, other ways

i just need to say
that i wish today
for a christmas in july
whatever that is
for you

celebrate.

since i've been gone

i haven't stopped thinking about christmas but i have had a difficult week of sorts. moving on!

it's monday and i was able to get over to hallmark for their christmas in july ornament premiere on saturday. i bought the ornaments on my wish list. there are more to be released in the coming months, which is very exciting.

they also had some peanuts halloween ornaments and i just fell in love with them. i am setting aside some money to buy them.

i cannot wait for summer to be over and i am glad i have tropical-colored paper snowflakes to keep me satisfied for christmas in july!

top ten tuesday

here are my top ten christmas songs... what are yours?

10. rudolph the red nosed reindeer

9. jingle bells

8. mele kalikimaka

7. white christmas

6. the christmas song (have yourself a merry little christmas)

5. let it snow! let it snow! let it snow!

4. holly jolly christmas

3. silent night

2. the most wonderful time of the year

1. mary did you know?

christmas planning

it's just about this time of year that i start finalizing my christmas plans.

where are we spending the holidays?
what is our gift budget?
what kinds of gifts do i need to make?
what kinds of gifts do i want to buy?
how long is my christmas card list this year?
are there things i need to plan ahead (hotel, flights, etc)?

so tonight i will turn up the air conditioning in my home and start making christmas plans.

and *finally* get around to hanging up those tropical colored paper snowflakes that gave me a carpal tunnel syndrome flare-up!

merry 4th of july!

for us americans, it is our country's birthday.

bless us all!