I am a Christmas person. I love most everything about it - the family gatherings, parties with friends, shopping for gifts, decorating, even my office party.
I do not, however, like cooking. This year I went out on a limb and attempted to make Christmas cookies with the kids. I thought it would be a nice, grandmotherly thing to do. I bought everything I needed for the project - ready-made dough, red and green sprinkles, icing in a can and cookie cutters.
I gave each of my three grandchildren - Tilleigh, 9, Evie, 5, and William, 3 - a ball of dough, a rolling pin to share and the cookie cutters. Easy-peasy.
Karen Nazor-HillWrong.
First hurdle. The dough kept sticking to the rolling pin, so I gave everybody a little bit of flour to sprinkle on their hands and the dough. The dough no longer stuck to the rolling pin, but flour was everywhere - on their clothes, on the floor, in their hair, on me.
Next step was to use the cookie cutters, and that's easier said than done. Besides having to dig the dough out of each of the cutters, not one cookie came out looking like it was supposed to. And, of course, each kid wanted the same cookie cutter at the same time.
Once we got past that, I handed them the sprinkles.
"What about the icing, Mom?" asked Evie (the kids call me "Mom").
"Aren't we supposed to bake the cookies first, Mom?" asked Tilleigh.
Bake before we decorate?
Seriously, I'm clueless when it comes to cooking.
I looked at the directions, and, yes, the 9-year-old knows more than I do. Not only did we have to bake the cookies, we had to let them cool off before we decorated them.
So I stuck the cookies in the oven, baked them and put them outside on the deck to cool. Wrong move. Turns out a flock of birds flew over. They left visible evidence.
We repeated the process. This time I let the cookies cool on the kitchen counter.
Thirty minutes later, we're back at the table, decorating the cookies. I realized then that I will never eat a cookie baked or decorated by a child. William had a runny nose, and Evie was coughing. William ate as much icing as he put on his cookie, and I'd catch Tilleigh and Evie sampling it as well.
An hour later, the cookies were iced, and the kids were proud of their work. But not one of them wanted to eat one. Smart kids.
The kitchen was a wreck, but I accomplished what I set out to do - make Christmas cookies with the grandchildren.
Next year, we're going to a bakery.
Contact Karen Nazor Hill at khill@timesfreepress.com or 423-991-5509.