Tamale Making and Cookie Baking

It is tradition in many Hispanic households to make tamales for Christmas. I remember watching my mom make them every Christmas when I was a child. She would make about two hundred when it was our turn to host Christmas Eve dinner (that's another thing Hispanic families do, we gather on the 24th and open presents at midnight).

In my family everything is scaled down a lot! It's just us living in WA so we tend to celebrate more on an intimate level consisting of us and two of our children that like tamales. Riley doesn't eat them.

I've eaten tamales with no vegetables in them but my mom would make them differently. She would add a green olive, a slice of jalapeño and a slice of potato. That's how I continue to make them except I use black olives. I believe this was our second time making them and although they came out decent they weren't great, not like Mom's. It was the masa. It needed more salt and needed to be softer which means I didn't add enough lard. At least I know where the problem is that way next time we make them we know where to focus on.

Sophie ever so cute wearing her Christmas collar. She really does like it because she doesn't try to take it off or bite it. 

I've been blogging for a while now. Gosh, I think I started when we moved to Tucson which was thirteen years ago. Crazy! I especially enjoy blogging when it's cold and cloudy outside because I like to put on a good movie and get cozy on the couch. One of the cats is always bound to be laying next to me. Just a perfect combination.

As I'm reading back on my agenda to help aid with my blogging I can't help but get melancholy about what I was experiencing back almost three years ago. On Dec. 20th I wrote, " It rained all night long and hard too. Rain kept hitting the windows. I love falling asleep to rain".    - how cozy does that sound!

Later that same day Jacob and I decided to start a new family tradition, cookie baking! Like baking more than just one cookie. For our first year we chose to bake three different cookies.

They were; Pumpkin-Praline with brown butter icing, Minty Chip Chocolate, and imitating Hello Robins Mackles'more cookie.

For the record. I help prep but Jacob is the baker in the family. Maybe one day I'll start baking myself.

Riley's such a willing helper ... only because he would sneak chocolate dough bites every now and then, lol! He looks a lot like Nathan when he was this age.

And here are the cookies. They were all sooo good but we definitely made too many. Even after gifting some away we still had a good amount of cookies left.

It was fun making different varieties of cookies. Looking forward to next years cookie baking.

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.