Palmabella's Passions

This week was BUSY! I wonder why I'm tired?

The oven went on every morning at 6. Since I am keeping track...I have baked 144 DOZEN cookies. That is over 1,728 cookies. When our dog, Ego, was alive, we never said the word COOKIE, unless we meant one of his dog biscuit treats. It was deleted from our vocabulary to mean "biscotti" in English. Therefore, every night, when Brad gets home from work, he asks, "How many "little fockers" did you crank out today?"

We got our Italy Tree up (more on that later and photos I promise).

I average 15-20 dozen cookies a day. Here's what 18 dozen cookies looks like.

In addition to the cookies, in the last few days, I made 11 tubs of soup (fennel and Italian Wedding), 150 tiny meatballs, a couple pounds of pasta, a huge pot of lamb ragu, 5 pans of lasagna (lamb and roasted butternut squash), 2 of Marcella's recipes for the Pomodori and Vino blog, delivered cookies, cooked dinner every night, and did 15 hours of therapy. Thank God for the therapy hours...I get to sit down!

Lamb ragu:

Wednesday, I delivered a cookie tray to a beautiful home in a gated country club community. The woman carefully chose only 6 types of cookies for a total of 9 dozen.
She was very gracious, and her home was beautifully decorated with hundreds of Radko glass ornaments (on her tree, on a wreath, in a huge bowl on her dining room table). She had a life size Santa greeting guests.

When I asked how many people, she said, "The WHOLE CLUB comes, well over 100!"
As she was looking for her checkbook, I asked if she was doing the food. (She had 5 bowls of nuts and 5 bowls of Chex Mix out.) She said, "I make a really good crab dip!"
I smiled and said, "Uhuh..." (thinking the list would continue). She said the chef from the club was making some mini-pizzas on tortillas, and of course there were my cookies. She said she would have a bartender.

All the way home I chuckled and thought, CRAB DIP??? That's what you're feeding over 100? I shutter to think what I would be cooking if 100 people were coming tomorrow for a holiday party. I'm thinking she is not Italian. Bless her heart. 109 people will get a cookie!

One of my Slow Travel friends, thinks I accomplish a lot in a day. She recently said, "I actually believe that Palma is triplets." Well, if that is the case, those two bitch sisters have not shown up AT ALL to help me in the kitchen! Maybe they are out Christmas shopping, because I certainly am not! LOL

Sunday, my oven will be off! I am only icing and decorating cookies.