On rolling out and cutting and frosting Christmas cookies. When I start making cookies the first of December and don’t finish until about a week before Christmas, and when my freezer is overflowing with about 30 dozen cookies, 6 different kinds, I just really don’t feel like going to all that hassle. Is that a Christmas cookie crime?

I’m a professed “love to cook and bake” kind of girl. But I think that love only goes as far as what kitchen ettiquette has imposed on me in 2011. This cookie cutter and donut cutter (L to R respectively) belonged to my grandmother’s grandmother. That would be … my great, great grandmother. I think. Either way, she was born in 1860 and married at the age of 31. I’m guessing she was using these cutters about that time; my great-grandmother and my grandmother both used them, too.

That was back when everything was homemade and homegrown. And on days when I just don’t feel like “taking care of my man” (and by that I mean the old-fashioned version of welcoming him home to a kitchen full of homemade biscuits, gravy, corn, green beans, turkey and stuffing), I have been known to open a bag of rice and make it on the stove. Yes, I said a bag of rice. The kind that’s pre-packaged and processed and only costs $1.39.

No one ever said I was Betty Crocker.

But I do own some cookie cutters of my own. Maybe someday I’ll once again decide that frosted shapely sugar cookies are worth the time. I doubt, however, they’ll get as much use as these.

Until we walk again …