LESSONS FROM THE COOKIE DOUGH...

I turned 60 this year...the age where you are most definitely on the down-hill slide (an assumption based on the fact that I don't know any 120 year-olds). The point where you can no longer pretend that you will "clean up your act" next year. The point where you need to start eating and acting like an adult (well, at least eating like one).

It has long been a tradition in our family to make cut-out Christmas cookies. When I was a young mom, I loved it so much that I developed my own recipe because I couldn't find exactly what I wanted. Things of beauty, they were. Melt-in-your-mouth they were. DELICIOUS!

This year, since we weren't with the girls for Christmas, I decided to bake the cookies and mail them to Seattle. I just could not, though, force myself to put Crisco in them. Just reading the word made my arteries shudder in fear. So I substituted "lite" Parkay. You could tell a difference, but they were still pretty tasty.

For home, though, I decided to really "clean up" the recipe:
Splenda instead of sugar
Egg Beaters instead of eggs
"lite" Parkay instead of Crisco and margarine

INTERESTING best describes the outcome. However, I did glean some wisdom from my experiment (and adventure):
1. Above substitutions do NOT produce a dough suitable for cutout cookies. (no prob...flat, round cookies will do just fine)
2. Above substitutions do not even produce a dough that resembles dough...ADD MILK
3. The term "sticky bread dough" is a necessary part of any vocabulary used to describe results of this adventure.
4. Eye-balling "walnut sized blobs of dough" to be made into spheres will NOT produce uniform sized balls of cookie dough.
5. Rolling them in Splenda does help the stickiness, but putting the bowl of Splenda on the burner is NOT the best idea unless you want to do some cleaning of the drip pan.
6. Taking the rings off BEFORE rolling the dough into balls is a much better idea than taking them off AFTER said rolling has been done.
7. Finished product does not even VAGUELY RESEMBLE sugar cookies. They resemble...uhhhhh....ummmmmm....welll, they DON'T resemble sugar cookies!
8. Adding this recipe to "recipes that turned out well enough to make again" is a great idea...NOT!!!!

AND

not actually related to the cookies, but just FYI, when the spout of the soft soap has "build-up" in it, the soap tends to squirt on the shirt instead of into the hand.

And now I think I'll go have a "cookie."

Holiday HUGZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ TO ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!