Baking For The Holidays

I love baking, and even though I'm not supposed to be eating too much sugar, I still enjoy it.  This year my families will go home with a tray of homemade cookies as my gift.  Since I have no idea what to buy people who want things and then go get them, it seems like the ideal solution.  None of them has the time to bake, but I do!

I have the fun of doing it, and other people will eat them and then take them away to remove the temptation.  Win win!

This year I've made six varieties so far:  chocolate chip, peanut butter, shortbread, chocolate chocolate chunk, oatmeal with dried cherries instead of raisins, and pecan tassies.  

Toll House Choc Chip

Choc Choc Chunk from a mix!

Mrs. Fields peanut butter cookies

Still to come are: Mexican wedding cakes, potato chip cookies, and sugar cookies with icing and sprinkles.  Those will probably happen over the next two days.  The sugar cookies are slated for the day Miss A starts her Christmas vacation, because she likes to decorate them.

Right now I have about two dozen cookie recipe books on the table.  I've chosen just one or two recipes from each of my favorite books.  My best ones look horrible... like my 1963 Betty Crocker Cookie Book.

I wish mine looked this good!  It's pretty shabby after being hauled out every December since 1971!

Then there's Mrs. Fields... our mall used to have a Mrs. Fields' shop, and when the kids were small we could buy a little cone of bite-sized cookies as a treat for behaving while shopping.

I have a whole collection of cookbooks from Wisconsin Electric Company, or as it's called now, WE Energies.

They're distributed annually, free of charge, in WE Energies territory.  Someone from our church picks up a stack every December and I make sure I get one.  The potato chip crisps recipe is in the 2011 book.  I think it might also be in the 1957 book, which in addition to cookies had appetizers, meals, all sorts of holiday goodies.  I have many older books from my mother-in-law, who worked there before she retired.

You can find them in pdf format on the internet for downloading, for 2021 here WE Eng Cookie Book 2021 or for years past at this link   WE Energies Cookie Book Archive

Bake on...

Things That Make Me Go Huh?!

My internet browser opens to the page where I access my email.  As browsers like to do, it offers me a slideshow of 'news stories' from various media accounts, like Yahoo, CNN, Business Insider, Women & Home, etc.  There are ads there for things I've looked at, like yarn and shoes.

Today I found this:

I gasped!!!  I drink diet soda, when I drink soda at all.  Since I've been diagnosed with diabetes I drink only water, unsweetened tea and diet beverages.  My favorite drink right now is a tall glass filled with ice and water up to about an inch from the rim, then topped off with diet (sugarless) cranberry juice.

Why are diet drinks disappearing from stores, you ask?

Millenials.

Yup.  Millennials evidently don't like the word 'diet'!  According to this article, the term diet is OUT OF FASHION with millennials and GenZ.  It has a negative connotation, and therefore the former diet sodas and other beverages are renamed Zero Sugar.

Huh.

The beverages will still be there, just named something non-offensive to young people.  Political correctness has hit a new low.

😞