Baking cookies in the Benton house 18 years ago and still today...
It’s almost time for Santa and once again we will have an opportunity to capture some of the most cherished images of a lifetime with your family.
When I was a child, my grandmother had a Christmas tradition that to this day I remember as though it was yesterday. She always made a date nut roll that was to die for. It was candy and was made like candy. Boiled water, a thermometer, lots of dates and brown sugar, walnuts, 2 granddaughters and LOTS of patience It was tradition in our household for nearly 16 years to get together and help make her famous date nut roll. I had no idea that we were not just making candy but we were making memories.
I couldn’t tell you the recipe – grandmother kept a few of those ingredients to herself – but I can tell you it was a recipe of love. I have some wonderful memories of my cousin and me standing on a chair next to her watching the thermometer until just the right time when we’d drop tiny balls of the date nut into the water to see if it world make a soft ball candy. When it did – it was time. Time for what? I couldn’t tell you exactly because that’s when she’d tell us to go tell our dad’s (her son’s) that the date nut roll was almost ready. I don’t know what she did while we were gone but when we came back it was always beautiful made and displayed on the counter waiting for us to sprinkle the powdered sugar on it – that is when the fun really began. What a mess we made. My grandmother would laugh so hard she’d cry . Just thinking about it takes me back to that kitchen with all those wonderful smells and memories.
My husbands family has a tradition of making Christmas cookies for the holidays. All kinds. Little houses, gingerbread men, candy canes, star – you name a Christmas object and they make it. So to create a memory for our son to remember fondly later in life for many, many years we have made Christmas cookies from scratch too. Talk about a mess The smile on his little face when he found flour all over him and me and whoever else ended up in our house for Christmas baking was simply PRICELESS.
To this day, if you visit our house the week before Christmas you’re likely to find us making those wonderful Christmas cookies. Stars and Christmas stockings and angels are our favorite to make and decorate. So break out you camera and capture the action as it happens. Some of the best photographs are not the looking at the camera pictures but rather the ones that look like you happen upon a magic moment. You know the magic of Christmas – in Family Traditions.
