It looks like an ordinary cookie but it’s not. It has a story that I’d like to tell.

I always liked chocolate chip cookies; they were my favorite when I was a kid.  When I was married and had a son, I baked them myself at Christmas time.     My son always liked them.  Once, when he was about 6, he came into the kitchen when I was baking them and took an interest in the process.  Then he asked me why all the cookies had to be the same color.  Wellll, I guess they don’t!

So I got some food coloring and put some of the batter into another bowl and he went to work making colored cookies.  I had to watch that he didn’t put in so much liquid that the cookies would be flat and not turn out.  Then I baked his cookies and they were…..sort of purple.  Hey, we colored Easter eggs, why not color Christmas cookies?  A six-year old’s brain is a wonderful thing.

The next year we divided the dough and he colored cookies again. Each year thereafter, even when he was a busy teenager, he was there the day we made the cookies and he colored half of them.  We had purple, blue, greenish, orangeish.  We would always talk about interesting things while we baked the cookies, and I look back on those times with fond memories.

When he was 18, he went into the Air Force.  If he was able to get home at Christmas, I waited till he got home to make the cookies.  A couple of years he wasn’t able to get home for Christmas.  Those were bad Christmases for mom!  But those years, I colored the cookies and sent them to him.  I have a cookie can that has been to England and back and I’ve never been there myself, lol.

Those years when I sent them to him, they arrived in crumbs from being shipped and he said there were no better cookie crumbs than those.  He lived in barracks and some of the other guys would steal each others’ Christmas goodies from home.  Nobody would steal his, cos they were identifiable!

Now he’s a grown man, and still, every year, I tell him which day I’m going to make cookies and he comes to my house and colors his cookies.  We still always talk about interesting things while we do this, but the things have changed so over the years.  Now it is two adults doing an old tradition, talking about adult things. And then he takes his cookies home and they are still one of his favorite things.

I love them so because they are good, but several years ago I had a time when I could have considered not making them any more. I was diagnosed with diabetes, which I was determined to control with diet and exercise.  I have done that for 2 1/2 years.  I really didn’t “need”  those good cookies, but I couldn’t stop our tradition.  It had to go on because it was so important.  And I had to have enough will power not to let my portion mess me up!

So for the last several  years I have portioned my cookies out very carefully.  This one made it to 1/8, baked on 12/16.  I think I did good! And I’ll keep making them as long as I can stand  up and read the recipe, cos it’s such a good tradition for both of us.  So it’s the last cookie for this year (and he said his have been long gone, lol) and it’s a very special cookie, with a history.  And it will be very good.  And bring back lots of good  memories.