Well, it is Christmas...

...Which is my excuse for posting so many blogs.  

Today I made lemon bars for Steve's birthday.  (Specially requested.)  I had no powdered sugar to put on top, so they came out looking kind of naked... But they still taste good. :)

Mommy Claus

Steve worked from home until lunch.  On lunch break, he put chains on his car's tires to drive to the office.  I really wished he weren't going and almost made him stay, but just as he was trying to say goodbye, Mom called and declared she was coming to our house.

"You are?" I asked in disbelief.

"Yeah.  I got my Jeep," she said.

Mom loves her Jeep.  She drove cross-country in it last fall, all by herself, camping at KOA sites along the way so she didn't have to pay for hotels and such.

"O-k-a-y," I said, knowing full well that once my mom sets her mind to things, she gets them done, come hell or high water.  Or just high snow.  

So off Stephen went to work, and about 45 minutes later, Mom came in with a gust of wind and a bag of goodies.  Kind of like Santa Claus.

"I ought to call you Mommy Claus," I told her as she pulled out Christmas napkins, Christmas candles, Christmas Trader Joe's cookies, and ornament hangers--plus some music I'd forgotten at her house.

The Sugar Cookie Saga

"I forgot the sugar cookie ingredients too," I told her.  I was determined to make sugar cookies this season.  Even though I'm missing (nearly) all the ingredients, not to mention most of the cooking stuff, and have never, ever made sugar cookies before.

"Oh!" Mom said triumphantly.  "Yes, so guess what I did..."

And she pulled flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and vanilla out of her sack.

I love my mom. :)

So I now had all the ingredients... Except shortening.  Mom decided we should go in her Jeep to Fred Meyer's nearby and buy some shortening.  She also wanted a shovel.  "Good luck!" I said.  "Fred Meyer's is out of everything winter, and nothing's getting restocked because all the trucks are stuck."

We ventured out anyway and picked up some shortening.  I also bought cooking spray and frosting.  As we shopped around, I realized...I didn't have a rolling pin.  Mom suggested I use the can of Pam.

Mom took off pretty soon after we returned.  As soon as she left, I researched sugar cookies on the Web (yep, I didn't even have a recipe!).  Every recipe I found included mixing up the ingredients with an electric mixer... Which I also don't have.

This was a true crisis.

I called Mom up.  "Mom, can you make sugar cookies without an electric mixer?" I asked, worried.

"Oh," Mom said, in that 'Hm... Didn't think of that...' tone.  "Well, yeah, with arm power.  And a sturdy mixing spoon.  It'll be... Well, then there's the flour.  Oh well.  Just use arm power!"

Hm.  How hard was this going to be?

I thanked my mom, and with my recipe up on the computer, a mixing bowl and a clean wooden spoon in hand, I jumped in.

All in all, I think it went over pretty well.  Stirring the cookie dough wasn't that difficult.  The only real problem I had was counter space, or lack thereof.  

I made cookies in the shapes of Christmas trees, ornaments, hearts, and one candy cane.  Only one, because the dough kept breaking.

The hearts were thrown in there because it was the only cookie cutter I had even remotely close to a Christmas shape.  Christmas means love, right?

The rest of the cookie shapes were made from cutting around cardboard cut-outs, an idea I got from my grandma.

I still have half of the dough left and plan on finishing up tomorrow, but our cookies look beautiful. :)