Cookie summary

I shipped out 18 boxes of cookies last night and this morning; my brother was writing abut the Christmas season encouraging us to fatten the bank accounts of the large corporations that sell us all the fancy high tech gizmos that we all covet - my kids both want new cell phones for Christmas - so I guess I am doing my part to buck the trend - though I did toss close to $200 into UPS's account, not to mention fairly large purchases at Whole Foods and Trader Joes, the big box stores of the natural food biz - but I actually spent a lot more at the Willy Street Co-op and Woodman's & Sentry, that are both WI-based grocery chains. So, even though I spend a good bit on raw materials, and shipping, I give almost solely homemade gifts - cookies - except for a few fancy high tech gizmos (I do have teenage children, after all).

I think, if we were going to crunch numbers, that this year, I made more than 24 kinds of cookie (at one point I blearily toted up the kinds on my list and I thought I got 29, but that's insane), and each kind was in a batch of at least 4-5 dozen. Sent 18 boxes, as above. Served, I don't know - close to 100 people at the party? It was a lot. Made rafts of appetisers and snacks: meatballs, baked brie, pesto-peppercorn torta (a roll of ricotta & cream cheese around pesto & cracked pepercorns, from Mollie Katzen's Still Life With Menu), 4 stromboli, sausage rolls (and one tray of wienies in poppin' dough), butternut squash quiche, spanakopita, spicey peanut dip & veggies, corn salsa, crackers & cheese, shrimp cornets, pickled mushrooms, devilled eggs .... and a bowl of clementines - never got around to cutting up the 2 pineapples I bought, but they probably are better for it - last night I noticed that they are starting to smell ripe.

So I guess the total summary is that I spend $400 - $500 on ingredients (and shipping) in order to work for 3 weeks (2 - 4 hours everyday?) in order to bake thousands of cookies, in order to ship cookies all over the country, feed a bunch of people at a party, and take trays and baskets of cookies to friends and work colleagues in Madison. Swapping being in a car in traffic on the way to Best Buy at 8:30 at night the week before Christmas for being in pajamas at midnight, baking cookies in my own kitchen.