C is for Cookie

Well, Monday was the cookie swap. And it was once again, fantastic, wonderful, delightful and the perfect way to kick off the Christmas season. My sistah, Lisa, invites ten ladies and we each bring 12 dozen packaged-for-delivery cookies. The morning begins with breakfast while sharing our cookie story. Usually, at least one person will have had a minor catastrophe while trying to make her cookies and this always makes for good story telling. Prizes are given for the best stories. This year the two prizes went to Deb who made Krumkaka for all of us using a krumkaka iron over her stovetop, one at a time. She won for her patience and stamina! And another prize went to Jill who made cookies that went in the oven at 400, and then the oven is turned off while the cookies take shape for the next SIX HOURS! Her prize was obviously given, again, for the time she put into her cookie. Sara was definitely in the running, since she drove from Denver and arrived home at 4 am the morning of the swap. Thankfully her cookies were in the freezer, and she looked really good for four hours of sleep!

Lisa decorates the house beautifully, with plates and name cards set out for each of us to display our cookies. This leads to a morning full of sampling. Amazing. The morning progresses with games and basically, there is just a lot of laughter that follows. We played one game where we had to guess the price of 13 different cookie ingredients and then add up how off our price guesses were. I was off by $18.78. I was the biggest looser. :)

This was Lisa's fifth year hosting the cookie swap and each year a group picture is taken for our recipe book that holds everyone's cookie recipe with a picture of each cookie. It's quite the organized and well executed event. Thanks Lisa for another morning that far surpasses Disney World for me.