An Introduction to The Brownie List

I am honored and thrilled to be on The Brownie List! I am a cook and know there is a secret ingredient in them aside from the love. Would you consider a bribe for the recipe? ...... You can save the long newsy update this year, I think I know what's up, almost daily, lots of fun! With love to you, FAMBB    (Comment on this post, originally published 12/9/2009.  Reprinted here, slightly amended.)   

The Brownie List - A Jewish Girl Does Christmas

 
It started innocently enough. HDK & Zanner and TBG & I were celebrating our first holiday season as working adults and we gave them a pan of my brownies and they gave us fire place tools. You know what I'm talking about..... the big brass stand and the little broom and dust pan and the oversized tongs and the pokey thing that's the only piece you ever really use anyway so why are the rest of them there????

Well, dear reader, I was abashed. Obviously, there was a mysterious Christmas gift giving code to which I was not privy. TBG was able to laugh it off and I liked the fire place tools a lot so I didn't make too much of a fuss but you can be damn sure that the next year I took Zanner shopping with me for their gift.

But that was because she kept score by dollars spent. In their divorce, there was only one point on which both they and the judge agreed --- neither of them had a very healthy attitude toward money. I was used to TBG's family Christmases, which featured lots of socks and warm sweaters and candy. Chanukah was books and stationary and hand knit mittens and maybe a doll or a dump truck but mostly it was judging what the relatives sent and then eating latkes. So, I had presented the brownies with pride and love and a sense that they were absolutely the perfect present for our bestest friends. I even baked them in a beautiful pan, which they got to keep.

Obviously, this was her issue and not mine. I knew that people loved my brownies and were happy to be around when I was baking them and smiled when they arrived as a care package in the mail. I knew that I loved making them and gifting them and watching people eating them and once I put that all together with the fact that Christmas is all about love and sharing and memories and comfort and did I mention love ..... well, the plan just kind of created itself.

I went to the giant Ace Hardware at Clark and Broadway and Diversey and bought clear plastic containers with bright red and blue and green and white tops. I bought brand new baking pans and actually paid attention to exactly how long 4 of them in the oven took to cook perfectly. I attached big beautiful bows and gave them to my special people. And my special people understood what they were receiving.... and, of course, that was part of what made them special.

Friends moved and siblings left the parental abode and cousins married and started families of their own and we moved and old friends re-appeared and playgroup kids went off to college and suddenly I was mailing a dozen boxes... then twenty... thirty.... forty-some last year and each one a total smile... on both ends.

How can I be sure? Because the only rule associated with The Brownie List is that the recipient must acknowledge the package with a real thank you note/text/phone call. 

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It's possible to blow off a printed signature on a photo Xmas card or an e-card greeting or a generic family newsletter; no one will judge you if you don't reply.  But if I've taken the trouble to bake and wrap and ship you brownies you cannot ignore me. Not if you want to stay on The Brownie List. Just ask the people who've wondered where their box was lurking.

Not because I'm keeping score; I'm bribing you with sweet treats to entice you to share a bit of yourself with me. Because I like you. And I miss you.... all year long but especially now when I want you to help me decorate the tree and eat latkes straight from the pan and take the middle brownie when it's hot right out of the oven.  And because you're on the list, you know you'd like to be here, too.  

Alas and alack, we've moved on from wherever we were at the time we were entwined in each other's lives, and there's nothing we can to to fix that.

Putting you on The Brownie List is my next best thing.  Sharing is caring and I care about you.

The Brownie List

I've gathered the ingredients on the countertop.  They'll live there until I'm done.

The pans are washed and ready to go, on top of the towels I inherited from Nannie.  The pot with the melting chocolate and butter was part of my mother's trousseau in 1950.  That's 75 years of oatmeal and melted butter.  

Just waiting for that chocolate.

I baked and packaged and wrote short notes to ten different sets of people who are in my life but live far far far oh just much too far away.  Everyone will reach out to thank me, not only because it's protocol for remaining on The List, but because it's been too long since we last touched base.

It's time consuming and messy and dealing with the USPS website is a nightmare and it's just about the best thing I do all year long.  Each box sparks a smile, a sigh, a wonderful warm hug around me heart.  I know so many wonderful people.  It's good to be reminded of that now and then.
 

Not Shopping

Dilatory means slow to act ..... and that's what happened this weekend.  I had every intention, really, of posting every day while we were in Indiana with the grandbabies.  But marathon UNO games; hide and seek in the basement; jumping at the trampoline park; and watching the snow fall... and fall... and fall, leaving more than ten inches to play with, and then hanging with the softest, snuggliest,  most loving puppy in the world,  

there was barely time to open my phone or computer to type.  

I'm assuming I'm forgiven.

By Saturday afternoon we were stir crazy.  Leaving Grandpa home to watch football, the rest of us piled into SIR's massive Ford and plowed our way through icy roads and piles of unplowed snow to the mall.  

FlapJilly loves the mall, even when there's nothng but pre-shopping to be done.  Her mom took photos of the things she liked while the boys wandered on their own .... until we came to this place.

Who knew there were this many flavors of chips in the world?

Apparently, I am among the minority.  I had no idea that Dubai Chocolate existed, let alone that it had gone viral.  

I understand green Life Savers; they and the orange ones are about the only candy I eat.  But this......

I have no idea what these are.

There were some items resembling real food.

This is a pickle party, meant to be shared.

I'm sorry.  Cotton candy comes on a paper cone at a ball game or the circus, not packaged with penguins.

And, in case you were thirsty, there were sorta kinda familiar bottles in one cooler,

fantastic cans in the other.

I will let you draw your own conclusions about the collection of delectable edibles we found;  I remain somewhere between bemused and appalled.