Too many cookies

 

Did I just eat 5 cookies?  Like a driver who suddenly asks: "did I just go through that stop sign?", I admit that at this time of year I become an impaired eater. I am spending more time in the kitchen, baking goodies for Christmas. I delay this yearly ritual as long as I can because I know myself too well.  The downward spiral starts with the first purchase of those vital ingredients: chocolate chips, coconut, nuts, glace cherries, cream cheese.  The list goes on.  My body knows when this stuff is in the house.  My mind communicates constantly with it: " I am here in the left hand cabinet.  Fine but I don't want you.  Oh yes you do.  No I don't, I will make myself a salad.  Yeah right, tell yourself what you want, but you know you want me. "

 

I start by baking the healthier ground-flaxseed-date balls, which look like meatballs but are really delicious treats. The next is the eye appealing marshmallow-chocolate chip-peanut butter squares. Guess which one is consistently the most popular with family and friends? There is something about coloured marshmallows that cannot be explained. The icebox-mistletoe cookies are next.  I guess in a new cookbook they would be called refrigerator cookies, but I pride myself on knowing what an icebox is, or was.  The sugar cookie dough is chilling in the icebox and waiting for it's rolling and cutting and baking and decorating with sprinkles. 

 

Help, will someone please stop me!  I need an intervention. Why am I doing this?  Because it feels good.  At a very young age, I was assigned to be the cookie maker in the family.  My mother (a great cook, and everything was homemade back then) would tell me that I was the best cookie maker and that I just had to make the cookies every week.  I think I am still making cookies from the same cook book.  So again this year, I am trying to be a responsible baker, trying to avoid the pitfalls of one little taste, on little cookie. It leads to a sugar intoxicated state in which I might just eat myself through all those stop signs that say danger ahead: cholesterol, hypoglycemia, Buddha-belly, regret, clothes-won't-fit, you will have to go on a diet!

 

Happy Holiday Eating

Lorna