Roman Mainers: Christmas Cookies

Living in Rome has provided me with many opportunities to do things for the first time. But a lot of them have nothing to do with the new country I'm in, and much more with the fact that I miss home and all things American. (Seriously, I may start listening to country when I get home. Ok, maybe I wont go that far.) But I definitely have discovered that I have way more American pride than I thought I did. Or I just developed it quickly while being away.

I had never made pancakes (remind me if I'm wrong) until I came to Rome. I never made Christmas sugar cookies either, at least by myself. Tonight, we had meatloaf for the first time ever too! Very exciting! And all, apparently, food related.

Anywhoo! Cookies!

See how sweet they are!
I could eat them right up!

No, really, we'll get to the cookies. But look!

"Cheese!"
"I'm a ham like my mom!"

We were joined by Loretta and Paco for our Christmas cookie adventure and we all had a really good time. I cooked the cookies the night before, making my own Christmas tree cookie cutters out of cardstock and tin foil. It worked, and at first I was very excited. Then it started smushing all the edges as my cutting edge flattened out. Then I started thinking how if I had been in America, it would be so hard to find or store cookie cutters. Then I resorted to cutting out cookies with a glass cup and said, "Look! Its an ornament! That's Christmasy!" and tossed out the tree.

Our production line.
With a steady intake of sugar, children make great laborers.

I had made a very special trip across the city to find a large enough chain grocery store for the food coloring. Of course, all my friends back home were making their own natural dyes. As much as that would have been fun, it would have added about a million more steps to this process. Including buying a food processor. Finding out where in the world I could buy things like beets and tumeric, etc. We'll revisit that when I'm back in the States. The dyes I had made some very nice jewel tones. And I even had found some very overpriced sprinkles! Of course, I don't even know the last time I bought sprinkles in the States. Maybe it was normal.

Teal ornaments are so bad, eh?

It was tricky at first trying to make the cookie decorating accessible to the little ones. Having frosting that was almost completely liquid at first didn't help any. (Note the Christmas tree with the bite out of it, second over from the right. It wasn't completely dipped, as it may appear. The frosting was just that runny) Once we had our good consistency, bags for squeezing the frosting out, and sprinkles in trays to be spooned out, we started making some progress. A good number of these below where done by Emma, all by herself. (See the bottom left corner. That shows a lot of her work)

Some cookie masterpieces

Of course, not all children could participate. Some had to be strapped down and watch the happening while being promised a cookie of their own. Said children waited very patiently. These were heavily sugared cookies after all.

"I can wait all day"

And yes, she was greatly rewarded for her patience.

I ended up making at least 3 or 4 different kinds cookies in the course of a few weeks, helping to make the spirit bright. Another first. Being away from home forced me into taking initiative on all Christmas spirit in the home. And the cookies helped that effort quite a bit. And yes, it was technically advent. But I don't care! They were all delicious! Mmmmmmmmmm, coooookies.