It's a bit late, but I figured I owed you all an update on the 2011 Web Warren Cookie Labs' season.

The Brown-Suited Elves delivered our 15-lb carton of Christmas Magic on the eve of 21 December, as expected. We shipped eight types of cookies, plus spiced pecans. Because our printer was refusing to, well, print, we couldn't do a funny little Christmas poem like we did last year. Instead, we printed up a "shipping manifest" over at the UPS Store. The elves there wear black with gold trim. Sadly, we found evidence of gremlins in their printer drivers, so instead of pretty, double-sided printing, we ended up with five pages of manifest-and-ingredients-list. 

This year, the Web Warren cookie spread consisted of: (READ MORE)

The following filk developed last weekend in the thick of Christmas Cookie baking. You may appreciate the irony of "healthy cookies"...

Oatmeal, the Raisin Cookie

With apologies to Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, Rudolph, Kris, Burl, and the Singing Cowboy, himself...

There are Cardamom Spice Rounds, and Cheese Straws, and Spritzen
Chocolate chippers and others with mix-ins
But even at Christmas we bake
The "most healthy" cookie, by Jake!

Oatmeal, the Raisin Cookie
Had a very bumpy top
And once you bit into it,
You would never, ever stop

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I must say. Ketones may not help to make the season bright, but the continuous glucose monitor absolutely does. Our first Christmas with the CGM and it was a pleasure to enjoy the day without attacking Charlie all day a la Norman Bates in Psycho. Christmas with the CGM - should be a Hallmark Channel holiday classic.

Holidays are usually pretty rough on Charlie's blood sugars, but his numbers were decent this Christmas. I think the trouble begins with grazing on appetizers.

"Charlie, how many of those crackers did you eat?"

[shrugs shoulders] "I dunno. Maybe six?"

We either over-bolus or under-bolus. It's a holiday tradition.  

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It's that time of year again -- time to report on this year's results of the WebWarren Cookie Laboratories.

Lest you think I've had a bit too much of the nonexistent "adult" eggnog (or given the outdoor temperatures, the nonexistent hot toddy), The Other Half's parents like to have several varieties of cookies on hand for Christmas Day visitors (i.e., the entire extended family) -- and with his mother no longer able to do the sort of baking she once did, we try to take up a bit of the slack. The first time we did cookie baking up here, I was trying to develop some new cookie recipes, and we brought down the results in a carton repurposed with Christmas wrapping paper and labeled "WEBWARREN COOKIE LABS -- EXPERIMENTAL SAMPLES". The name -- and the mock pretentiousness -- stuck. While were not able to get down south this year, the Cookie Labs have been in full force.

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One of the mixed advantages of living far away from family is that when you do finally get home, there's a lot of catching up to be done. Because we've been away and not in all that close touch, we're considered the "neutral third parties", and the updating comes chock full of dish.

Nowhere is this more apparent then when diabetes comes into play. Siblings who'd never "rat" on each other in full-court, whole-family press, will each take you on the side and let you know that the other's numbers are being kept "too high" or "too low", that s/he doesn't test (enough), or that s/he keeps forgetting how many of which pills need to be taken, when. Sometimes one will say another's medication dosages have been increased "because s/he's not watching what s/he's eating". It's Diabetes Police by Proxy (DPP).

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One of The Other Half's family holiday traditions has been to redecorate their entire houses in Early, Middle, and Modern Christmas. Everything from the knicknacks on the end tables to the rug and hand towels in the guest bathroom is redone in red, green, snowmen, and old-fashioned Santa Clauses. The centerpiece of it all is the Christmas Village.

While some folk pride themselves on collecting all the pieces in a particular name-brand collection, most of these villages are odd collections of pieces purchased from sale racks here and there, or made by friends and family.

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