http://norman.walsh.name/2004/12/18/cookieSaturday 7 217 2004-12-18T20:36:48-05:00 $Date: 2005-09-11 10:27:02 -0400 (Sun, 11 Sep 2005) $ Norman Walsh 2004 Norman Walsh One of our annual Christmas rituals is “Cookie Saturday”. For about the last 15 years, Deb Walsh and I have been the family cookie makers. That is to say, Deb is the chef and I'm the cheap day labor, though in fairness, I've slowly graduated from being largely incompetent to requiring only moderate supervision over the years. The last couple of years, Cookie Saturday has been a two-day affair, with all the dough making on one day and all the baking on another. The alternative was basically an eight hour marathon and that's a lot less fun than it sounds. This year, for the first time ever, the family Christmas will be chez Walsh. Deb's folks, her sister, and her family are all coming to us this year. The rest of the extended family is still going to be in New York (and my own folks are over in England) so it'll be much smaller than the usual seven course spread for fifty. But it'll still be seven courses. All fish. Having no significant cultural heritage of my own, I'm forced to borrow from others and the Italian seven fishes Christmas Eve meal is near the top of my list. Raw clams, fried calamariSquid, shrimp scampi, scallops, scungilliConch fra diavolo, mussels fra diavolo (because really, you can never have too much fra diavolo, right? Right!), and angel hair pasta aioliBasically olive oil on angel hair pasta with sardines. All of this is to say that our Cookie Saturday was much less hectic than in years past. We're not carrying trays of cookies to a half-dozen houses this year, so we could make a lot fewer. This year it was Russian tea cakes (my favorite), spritz, and biscotti. The spice nuggets and cranberry bars are sure to be missed, but there's only so much dessert you can comfortably eat after an Italian dinner.