My First Cookie Exchange

My Sweet Neighbor hosted a cookie exchange on Sunday. I felt honored to be invited and grown-up participating! As a child, I can remember staying up late on cookie exchange night--waiting for Mom to come home with the assortment of the year. Below is the 'hostess with the mostest' opening a few gifts...

Poor N.J.M. was feeling under the weather... and still went through with the occasion. In these Northern Virginia parts, she is famous for her soup--whipping up two pots in her condition. And for fear that you forgot how her 'Sweet Neighbor' titled came to be, yet another reminder--she made BOTH soups vegetarian. This woman is a gift, she "does" extravagantly.

The concept of the event is quite simple, if you actually bake. I do not cook. I do not bake. I burn. I over-add. I forget ingredients. Disaster ensues when I enter the kitchen. Usually I have Mom to bail me out, but she had her own five dozen cookies to prepare. This time, C.J.R. rescued me. On her drive from Charleston, South Carolina (where she is in school) to Boston, Massachusetts (where she is from), I am her stop-over. I allowed her to unwind, prior to enlisting her help. We talked the evening hours away with a coffee date at the local joint... where we stayed past closing... not realizing they do not compete with Starbucks' hours. Then we (inhaled) a gourmet dinner cooked by my parents. I should have let her go to bed following our late meal, in order to insure she had adequate rest for her second leg, another nine-hour journey. I granted her no such permission, I instead insisted she make cookie dough (for my share at the upcoming party) while I did dishes. Then I promptly froze the dough, did not allow her a single cookie! And we were off to sleep peacefully, knowing I would have home-made cookies come Sunday.

This is how our swap worked: You bake a lot of cookies. (Like I did, fresh on Sunday after thawing.) You package the cookies. (Like I did, attempting to bring an eco-element to the occasion...

or like Latte Woman did, with gorgeous--over the top--festive holiday decor.)  

You go the exchange. (Like I did, after showering.) You eat a lot of cookies. (Like I did!) You swap cookies. (Like we did, after sampling.) You bring home an overwhelming amount of cookies. (Like I did, double because I had a mother in attendance.) You do not know what to do with all these cookies. (Like I wondered, no longer having an appetite for cookies.)

Be merry (and fat!). Or thankful you have Latte Woman, featured above, as dedicated partner in exercise.