12 Posts of Christmas: Warming Your Holiday Belly

We're almost there, folks! Christmas Eve... that dark night before the brightness and warmth of Christmas morning!

As you might expect, I'm a little busy today... my stepson Jesse and his wife Jessie (no, that doesn't get confusing at all... REALLY!) are coming over for dinner. Tomorrow morning we'll head down to Salem to spend some time with Trish's sister Mary Lou and her brother Pete... and then, on the 26th, we head up to visit my family in the Blaine/ Ferndale WA area (near the Canadian border).

With all that travel, you'd think I'd just chuck the whole "12 Posts of Christmas" idea and admit defeat, huh? HA!! As my good friend Kert will tell you, "Harold never gives up!" (Long story from high school involving a pen-and-paper wrestling game... see, we all made characters based on our group of high school/ college friends and - wait. I'm stopping right now before I sound even MORE geeky... if that's even possible!). I've scheduled a couple more posts to fire off while I'm "otherwise occupied"... think of it as this channel's "pre-recorded" content.

So, what says "the holidays" better than the smell of cookies baking in the oven? No matter who's been tasked with cooking the holiday meal, everyone can throw in on bringing some sweets to the party... here's a couple of my fave's; they're pretty easy to whip up, and they'll make your house smell nice and warm as they're baking!

Traditional Christmas Cookies: The simplest cookies of all! I'm not big on the frosting, but a little brown sugar sprinkled on top is a nice alternative to the usual sugar sprinkles...

Rum Balls: This is a simple recipe that actually uses up some of those old vanilla wafers you've got hanging around the house... and you can use Rum Extract instead of the "adult beverage."

Chocolate Snowflake Cookies: My mother wasn't big on baking sweets when I was growing up, but when bake-sale time came around, this was one of her stand-bys. Pretty simple to make, and they taste GREAT out of the oven!

Leibkuchen: There's a much larger degree of difficulty to these little molasses cookies I got hooked on when I was living in Germany... if you do them right, though, they're a knock-out!

So there ya go... fire up the oven and stick some confections in as you do that last minute present wrapping - by the time you're done, you'll be smiling from all the smells pervading your kitchen!

Happy holidays...

-Harold