Something Old, Something New

Gluten-free Christmas Cookies  

On Christmas Eve, Grant read aloud A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas. This year I was the only audience, but in the past, it was to all the children, after Christmas Eve services, accompanied by eggnog and cookies. This year, we skipped services and, in honor of the Hispanic flavor of Key Biscayne, sipped rum and ate tres leche cake. We are adapting.

For Christmas, we drove up to have dinner with a friend in Fort Lauderdale. Patten brought Filipino crab soup full of quail eggs and baby corn. Dinner was Honey-baked ham, my smashed potatoes (from a New York Times recipe), Grant’s vinaigretted asparagus, Brussels sprouts with cranraisins, and a multi-berry pie Marjorie baked. Fortunately she forgot to put out the deviled eggs she made for appetizers. We were more than sated.

The secret to eating good food is to hang out with good cooks who use good ingredients. Seems obvious, but the Christmas cookies I bought through our congregation’s auction sadly proved my point. They looked good, but with too little butter and sugar plus an emphasis on being gluten-free, I feel guilty for saying, they were miserable excuses for cookies. After a couple of nibbles, we designated them for the garbage can, saving our tastebuds and waistlines.