Reindeer Cookies

Kaitlin Gray

My family has always been full of amazing chefs. All the women, in particular, can make fabulous dishes, mostly because "back in the day" you couldn't just go to the store and pick up a frozen meal-in-a-box to serve to your family, or a cake-in-a-box with frosting-in-a can for birthdays and other special occasions. You had to know something about preparing food "from scratch!"

Technology has brought about many positive changes for working moms. Nowadays, the convenience foods available in grocery stores have made the process of "cooking" much easier on people like my mother, a high school French teacher who lives an hour away from her current job, and my grandmother, who will be 80 in December, while still allowing them the opportunity to be creative when they feel a little more inspired to mix it up and make it up.

A great example of my mother's "mixing it up" and "making it up" technique can be found in the delicious reindeer cookies we make every year about a week before Christmas. I think it was my mother's way of introducing another way we could spend time with her during the holidays. Every year, my twin sister and I would get together in the kitchen while our dad was still untangling the lights, and saying a few choice words, so my mother could wrap the lights around the tree to her liking later.

My mother would start slicing the ready-made, slightly thawed, sugar cookie dough, and my sister and I would start picking out the brown and red M & M's, never eating them of course, until after all the cookies were made. We did sneak "one or two" of the other colors here and there, though! After making the cookies, we would finish decorating the tree while the cookies cooled off on the racks in the kitchen.

Then as soon as we had finished hanging the ornaments, we'd all have a reindeer cookie with some milk or hot chocolate before packaging them up in tins to share with our friends at school and give to our neighbors. We always took a big container full to our grandmother's house. Actually, everyone (especially Grandmama) cooked something and brought it at Christmas time, but the traditional reindeer cookies were my favorite! Still are!