Sr Patricia On: Christmas Cookies

(Sister Patricia Owens O’Flannery, OP, a post-modern pre-traditional omni-spiritual Dominican sister, periodically contributes to AoftheA.  Today she shares with us her traditional Christmas cookies.)

(Wheeee! I’m on Pewsitter!! Front page even! I’m so ecstatic, I don’t know my Manipura Chakra from my Vishuddha Chakra! Welcome, sitters! I’m so blessed you stopped by!)

Hello, my loves, my lovely dear readers!! It is my sincerest hope that all of you are enjoying a splendid and spectacular Solstice Season! A time to celebrate the Lengthening of Days and the promise of New Light! Isn’t it exciting! This is truly one of my most favorite high holidays!

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve last posted.  As you know, I am a very busy nun, and what with the excitement and hard work during this past election, and driving that dratted bus for Sr Simone all through the summer – I’ve barely had a moment to myself!  But rest assured, dear friends – I was able to join a group of Celtic druids on retreat at the Gap of Dunloe in Ireland earlier this month, and let me tell you, my energy fields have been fully realigned.  What a wonderful feeling!

Well, the Mayans were wrong. I knew from the start that that calendar was merely a practical joke, a temporal pie-in-the-face, as it were. I was surprised at how many people thought the Mayans were serious, because I assumed everybody knew that the Mayans were the greatest pranksters in all of history! It’s true! They invented the banana peel pratfall, and if you studied their hieroglyphs as I have, you’d see a striking resemblance between many of the images and several Three Stooges routines.

No, the Mayans were only fooling around with that calendar. The ancient Incans, on the other hand…well, that’s a topic for another time.

So anyway, here we all are, celebrating our holidays. I thought today I would share with you one of my most favorite traditions: baking cookies! Everyone loves cookies! Well, except for Sister Di. Sister Di Abeadies doesn’t like cookies.

Now normally, Sr Jacqueline Daniels handles the holiday baking, but I’m in charge of the sugar cookies. I must correct that dear sweet boy LarryD, though – I know he likes to call them “Christmas Cookies”, and while I agree it is a quaint name that hearkens to a less-enlightened age, we prefer to call them Solstice Cookies!

Cookies and other delectable treats are such a staple this time of year.  As the cold weather presses on, they are the perfect companion to a cup of hot cocoa.  A festive platter of fresh cookies are always welcome when visiting friends or family.  The aroma of freshly-baked cookies fills the air with scents that soothe and succor us.  Mmmmm!  They bring sweet and sugary harmony to our inner consciousnesses, don’t they?  At least until the sugar rush kicks in…

I use only the finest organic wheat flour grown and harvested by accredited Free Trade organizations. The milk and butter are from certified non-stressed dairy cows, and the eggs are strictly free-range chicken produced. The vanilla is pure, never artificial. The sugar I pick up bulk from Costco.

What’s fun about Solstice Cookies are the wide range of styles! Just last year, my order launched a line of Solstice Cookie Cutters, and all proceeds from the sales support my International School for Interpretive Liturgical Dance. So far I’ve raised $9.25! Isn’t that wonderful?

Here are a few of the styles I like to make:

Reiki Stones

The cutters leave the impressions, and we trace them with gold or silver icing. For variety, I made this batch using organic blue corn flour (mixed with tapioca and almond flour), straight from the llanos of Argentina.  Scrumptious!

Labyrinth wheels

These are difficult to make, and master chef Lady Willow de Hawke of the Canadian Wiccan Coven taught me how to make these without going dizzy (the trick is keeping one eye closed!). I tried teaching Gordon Ramsay, but he didn’t have the patience, and I didn’t appreciate his foul language!

Yin-Yang Yummies

The trick is in rolling up the dough – it’s very difficult, and takes years of practice.  You have to first separate the dough into halves, and add cocoa to one of them.  Then you slice the roll and bake!  I use a smidgen of red icing to indicate the Winter Solstice.  Fun to make and fun to eat!

Ankhs

These are just your basic cookie-cutter shapes, and they can be frosted and decorated any way you prefer.  I like to call these little delights “Ankh-le biters”.  Isn’t that cute?

Yoga Poses

These are by far the most popular cookies I bake.  The cutters are 3″ in diameter, and they leave impressions of different poses in the cookie surface.  We like to play a game called “Strike A Pose”, where all the cookies are served upside-down, and you have to recreate the pose that’s on the cookie you’ve chosen.  I win every year.

So there you have it – my most popular Solstice Sugar Cookies.  If you wish to order these cookie cutters, send LarryD an email, and he’ll pass along your requests.  You get my cookbook “Sister Patricia’s Kooky Cookie Book” as a thank-you gift!  What a deal!  And remember – you are what you eat!

Just writing this post has gotten me all peckish, so I’m going to dash off and nosh a bit.  I wish each and every one of you a very Happy Solstice…oh, and a Merry Christmas to those of you who still celebrate that.

Happy New Year as well!  Ta ta!!

About these ads