Of Cookies & Skinny Jeans & Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

Are you a fan of Semi-Sweet on Facebook and Twitter?  If you’re not, you should be – you’ll have access to all manner of “bonus content,” including links to interesting health- and nutrition-related articles, delicious-looking recipes I find, news about goings-on around town, and many days, updates on what I’m eating (you might find something new to try!).  A couple of days ago, I posted some tips for making it through the holidays while still fitting into your skinny jeans, and also about baking cookies.  And a few people commented – surprised comments like “Hey, idiot! The two are incompatible!”

Well I argue they’re not.  I’d describe my diet this time of year as “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul” – that is, I sacrifice calories in certain areas so that I can indulge in others, while still avoiding holiday weight gain.  And I also exercise that oh, so elusive word – “moderation.”  So when L. and I baked the Candy Cane Kiss cookies I’m about to tell you about, I had one.  And no BLT’s (batter licks or tastes) while in process.  And the rest of my day was filled with wholesome, low-calorie, healthful foods (but for those few pretzels I had at a board meeting, natch).  You. Can. Do. This. Too.

OK, lecture over – on to the fun stuff!

It’s the official start of one of my favorite holiday pass-times . . . baking cookies.  L. and I kicked off bake-a-palooza 2010 with a great Candy Cane Kiss cookie baking session and they came out beautifully.  This is an easy recipe that’s great to do with kids – if you have those around the house, too.  If you want to make extras, this recipe doubles great, and you can freeze the cookies to eat/give away later.  Just make sure they’re fully cooled, and then use a 9×13 plastic container with a lid (ours are Rubbermaid), and if you’re anal like me, you might want to invest in some super-duper big Ziplocs to put around the containers.  No freezer burn’s going to penetrate your goodies, no-siree.  Wanna see a slideshow of our efforts?  Check it out now, but beware, there’s music.

I’ve laid in my ingredients to do a boat-load of my now-famous rugelach (every faux-Jew’s gotta have a rugelach recipe in her repertoire), some dog biscuits for doggies-not-ours, walnut snowballs (L’s favorite and mine too), sugar cookie cutouts, and probably something with pecans, because I somehow ended up with two bags of them.

I’ll keep you posted as I go along!

© 2010, Sarah. All rights reserved.

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