Haul Out the Holly!

i want to be the poster child for ann taylor by the time i'm 40. i say that on every shopping trip and closet cleaning expedition. this whole notion began in college with casserole clothes.

i'm hoping to one day copyright that phrase.

when you are older and established as an adult, you get invited to nice holiday parties by friends who have a fireplace, and perhaps a pet, in their cozy, well furnished townhome/home/apartment/loft/etc. everyone is asked to bring a favorite comfort food and a few people always show up with bottles of wine that are worth displaying and cost more than $6 at the local liquor mart.

because it's cold you and your date/partner/husband/fiance/whatever will be wearing military style wool coats casually slipped over a snugly tied scarf and warm leather or suede gloves (there's wiggle room on that one). your partner is wearing an argyle sweater and comfy khakis and you are wearing nice pants/skirt or a dress. and you brought a casserole.

casserole clothes are the kind of things you'd wear to a party that you'd show up to with a nice bottle of wine or a steaming, heavy casserole.

we do not wear casserole clothes quite yet.

what we DO wear are cookie exchange clothes!!! still classy, but not wine and casserole classy.

the cookie exchanges we've attended for the past 2 years have been small-- only a handful of people. that's a by product of moving every 8 months. it's hard to make a lot of friends! but they have also been a blast. this year was no exception.

i made kolaches and my grandmother's soft raisin cookies.

growing up outside of chicago, i was exposed to a fairly significant number of cultures--big cities always have melting pots with a long list of ingredients. because of that, i was also lucky to receive exposure to foods and drinks that would have otherwise been unknown to me.

since our move from illinois in 1999, i have not seen a kolache cookie, which is unfortunate because i loved them the most at cookie exchanges as a child. i hoarded them, let's be honest.

googling them was daunting because i wasn't sure that was their real name and describing them is vague-- a cookie with jelly in the middle.

but land'o'lakes has a recipe right up on their website. i followed, but instead of an egg wash, i sprinkled powdered sugar over top once they cooled.

the first one that i ate took me right back to my childhood, stealing kolaches from everyone's plates and being so disappointed when they were gone within a day of getting to our house.

the second recipe is one i will not share. while the recipe is by no means top secret, passed only to one woman in each generation (i think every woman, blood or nuptially related, in our family has this recipe), i do feel that it was only meant for our family. my grandmother created this recipe herself and it's a classic for everyone on my paternal side, and for quite a few on my maternal side i have recently found out. for many of us, holidays aren't holidays unless we're eating these.

i do love making them for my friends, however. i feel like i'm honoring my grandmother's cooking spirit every time i watch someone marvel at how good and unusual the cookies are. i think she probably gets a kick out of a legacy that came from a simple recipe that was made because my grandfather and most of their kids didn't like the texture of oatmeal.

what kinds of things do you like to do for the holidays, aside from the actual holiday traditions? do you throw or attend any sort of yearly shin-dig? are semi-secret family recipes a part of that?