The annual tradition continued today – mom & I celebrated Baking Day. I headed next door at 9am with some extra baking sheets & my mail to be mailed. I returned home after 10pm. Heh. Over 12 hours of baking – mom & I are devoted.

Saturday, we went grocery shopping – big time. We spent an hour or so in Sam’s Club getting bulk ingredients (and I bought some short bread cookies – yum!) and then went to Kroger for even more supplies. A short stop at Dollar Tree so I could get some wine bottle wraps I’d seen before (but didn’t know I’d need). The crafty gift I’m giving could use those wraps. 🙂

Yesterday was to be my cleaning day, and I did get some stuff done. But when I returned from a (very very cold) walk, mom waved me inside the house. She was popping corn for crackerjack. So I came in & started helping. When I made the sugar coating for it, I followed the directions which said “light brown or white sugar” and I used the first option. Apparently when Gramma made it, she always used white sugar. Whoops! No matter, it still tasted yummy and when we made the second batch, I used white sugar. So now we have two-tone crackerjack.

Before I’d come over, mom had already made her ice box cookie dough (butterscotch cookies). Then while I was there, she made the dough for the Lindy Cookies (chocolate chip cookies). Both doughs went into the back porch, which in this weather is like a walk-in freezer.

This morning I headed over at 9am as I said. Dad made me an Egg McMikey sammich for breakfast – yummy! (I think the pat on the paper towel wrapped sammich is what gives it the best flavor). Then mom & I got to work. We started by baking the Lindy cookies. Then it all becomes a blur – we made lots of doughs & baked lots of cookies. Around 1pm, mom & I were getting pretty hungry. Dad was out at the Lake getting some things and we forgot to suggest he bring home lunch. So I headed to Covington & got us a sweet onion chicken teriyaki sandwich. We resumed baking again.

I had a bit of a break when I made the balls for the peanut blossoms upstairs & watched some of Jumping Jack Flash while doing so. (It was ironic since just the night before, I was telling mom that Jumping Jack Flash is one of those movies that I can watch anytime it’s running on TV. Heh.)

At the end of the evening, when we broke down & had supper (chicken sammich for me, made with the chicken mom cooked today for Christmas Day dinner of chicken casserole), we baked the gingerbread & sugar cookies that we’d gotten from Market Day. I had picked up some white cookie icing and green & red cake icing at Jo-Ann’s a few weeks back. I had a ball decorating cookies. And they look really cool.

Anyhoo, when all was said & done, we made the following items:

• Crackerjack
• Lindy Cookies
• Ice box cookies
• Cheesecake Cupcakes
• Floor sweeping cake (caramel pecan dreams)
• Nipple cookies (peanut blossoms)
• No Bake cookies
• Aunt Alma’s pecan cookies (it was soooo good to have those again)
• Sugar cookies
• Gingerbread men

It turns out Amy & Rachel are racing ahead of the storm and on their way home tonight. They spent last night & today in Chicago visiting friends, and are currently on their way to us. Expected arrival time is around 2:30am. Here’s hoping the way is easy!

(I love Christmas time!)