Now That Smells Like Christmas...

Slept late this morning and really enjoyed it; actually awoke with some energy!

I spent the late morning/early afternoon making cookies. It was like a lovely flashback to my childhood although my cookie-baking is curtailed compared to my mom's. I made my favorite of the holiday cookies, wine biscuits (recipe here). I used the last of my hearty burgundy and haven't been able to find anymore. Looks like I'll have to visit my mom again just to buy more wine! (Geez! Twist my arm!) Plain old burgundy just doesn't do it.

Mom used to also bake almond bars, molasses cookies, and butterballs (which for some reason they call "Danish wedding cookies" here). I loved the molasses cookies next best, but the only year I tried to make them I ended up with a gluey dough that literally had to be scraped off my fingers. I keep forgetting, when I'm visiting home, to rummage around in the recipe box--an old cigar box--in which lives the classic cookie recipes hand-written on white or blue paper and find the definitive version of the molasses cookie recipe.

Mom baked many dozens of cookies, some which found their way on paper plates to be exchanged with relatives who gave us their wine biscuits, almond bars, etc. She also made them for my best friends' mother, other friends' families, and my godparents (both sets). If we were lucky, someone in the family would make wandi's, a friable, sugar-scattered confection that was twisted on itself and then deep-fried (the closest equivalent I can think of is a funnel cake, but that's not it either: funnel cakes are chewy and these are thin and break the moment you bite into them, showering you with powdered sugar). Wandi's are difficult to make and the older I grew, the less the aunts baked them, so they became the ultimate treat.

When the cookies were done, I ran out for a few groceries and discovered myself suddenly infected with Christmas spirit. Much better than the flu, trust me. :-) Came home to start making spaghetti sauce. Since I don't have my own home made tomato base, I start with a base of three jars of Classico d'Napoli sauce, tomato and basil, no sugar added (read my lips: real Italian spaghetti sauce has no sugar in it), add water since neither of us likes it that thick, and add a cut-up stick of pepperoni, chunks of pork, and meatballs.

It's been simmering for two hours now and has another hour to go. The house smells heavenly, of wine biscuits and "the gravy." Now that smells like Christmas! I sit and sniff as I watch Ask the Manager Christmas specials. But surely Heaven smells of spaghetti sauce, fresh-baked Italian bread, and wine biscuits...