I didn’t bake a single cookie in December. Not one. Even though my cousin, the famous Grey Eagle baker Lois Thielen, shared her classic festive recipes.
Three dozen eggs sat on the kitchen counter along with seasonal spatulas, Lena and Mina’s old Xmas cookie cutters, and seven shakers of holiday sprinkles.
My Spotify playlist was filled with Christmas hymns and tunes, with Johnny Mathis’s Sleigh Bells at the top. Had I baked Lois’s cookies, I would have played Sleigh Bells at least 10 times. I always feel festive listening to Sleigh Bells.
But not this time. I don’t know why.
Instead of baking cookies and making hot chocolate from scratch in December, I was reading Mel Robbins’ NY Times bestseller Let Them.
Tired of relatives’ snarky comments over the Christmas turkey – the same tedious ones every year? Let. Them.
Bored with friends’ choice of dull bars and cafes when we could meet at Sparky’s, Fisher’s, or Gathering Grounds in Avon? Let. Them. And go to those fun places on your own.
The Let. Them. theory has limitless applications. There are few annoying scenarios that won’t scroll back your frustration dial if you Just. Let. Them.
Hence I let myself miss the pleasure of baking a curated selection of recipes in pleasing Christmas cookie cutter shapes to savor with hot chocolate made from my cousin’s tried and true recipe in front of my twinkling tree last December.
I enjoyed the tree but opted for no gifts, no big meals, no Kemp’s ice cream pail filled with Mom’s holiday brandy slush. Just rest. And silence. And peace.
The oven remained dark and cold. The three dozen eggs silently passed their use-by dates.
I feel guilty about the chickens laying all of those wasted eggs, and don’t know what I’ll do with seven shakers of seasonal sprinkles, but this much I know for certain – it doesn’t have to be Christmas to bake Lois Thielen cookies while listening to Sleigh Bells.
Thanks to Lois, we can make goodies through the year with a downloadable booklet of that name, coming soon to LenaMina.com
As 2024 counted down, I kept someone company while she baked oversized New Year’s Eve chocolate chip cookies infused with a substance that’s still banned in New Zealand.
It is summer here and the cookies, I hear, were popular around the campfire.
Half of one of those cookies put the imbibers to sleep, so they missed seeing sparks of NYE fireworks cascading over the Pacific at midnight.
I had no cookies of any kind on New Year’s Eve. There weren’t any cookies in my pantry apart from a tube of stale arrowroot biscuits. No one ever wants to eat those.
Nor were there any fireworks along the quiet old harbour with its bobbing boats and warbling morepork in the bush outside my window. The little owl’s call was calm, not high-pitched, which means that all is well in this world and in the spirit worlds we cannot see.
I made it to midnight with the owl and the pussycat, reading Let Them in the glow of my cute Christmas lantern.
Just scanning Lois’s recipes as I write this makes me want to crack some fresh eggs and dust off the holiday spatulas.
I’ll be on my own in the city, after work, whisking while listening to Sleigh Bells, appreciating the Christmas tree before packing it and the ornaments and Mom’s old tree skirt away for another year.
Lois has won hundreds of baking ribbons at Minnesota state and county fairs. You can’t go wrong with a Lois Thielen recipe, at Christmas or whenever you feel like baking.
I’ll let you know as soon as Christmas Through the Year can be downloaded here at LenaMina.com
