Today was a two-fer in terms of fun food. With a limited number of days remaining until Christmas, so many fun ideas to create, and only so many days that all my kids are here, sneaking in a couple fun foods seemed like a good way to go.
After the grand time we had fashioning our gingerbread village last Christmas, we all knew gingerbread in some form or another needed to be on the schedule of festivities again this year. I polled the kids and rather than do miniature houses again, we decided to go big and make giant gingerbread men. My goal was to make them as big as conveniently possible, so I sized up a template to print on an 8.5”x11” sheet of paper. The kids used a knife to cut around their templates, the boys all using a traditional gingerbread man shape and Malia going rogue to turn her gingerbread girl into a dragon girl. The boys and I all thought it looked just like Batgirl, but Malia was adamant that it was a dragon. Both men and dragon girl expanded a bit as they baked, and they turned out pretty gargantuan. I’m really glad I didn’t try to make two on a single cookie sheet. We would have ended up with some crazy conjoined gingerbread.
As in all things, all four of my children created very different gingerbread men people beings. Daniel’s man ended up looking like an ‘80’s punk rocker with multicolored spiked hair. Nathan’s looked an awful lot like Oscar the Grouch with a bit of extra bit of color in his hair. Matthew’s was wearing a rockin’ Christmas suit. And Malia’s did not end up looking like Batgirl. It became a man-eating dragon wearing a pearl necklace and star earrings. I’m so proud that my only daughter has such refined tastes. Of course, she did soften the slaughter by adding a timeless piece of jewelry. And to be completely honest, the whole ginger-dead men thing was all my fault. 😂
At the conclusion of the decorating, Daniel decided that the houses had been more fun, but the giant gingerbread men were still fun. I think it would be great to combine the two-a village of tiny houses terrorized by a giant gingerbread man. (I think there have been side effects associated with raising three boys. Twenty years ago, I don’t think I would have considered having a gingerbread village meet a grisly end a funny idea, but I’ve had to make some mental adjustments to keep up with my boys. 😜)
Once the explosion of buttercream, candy and sprinkles was cleaned up, we moved on to our second course of fun food for the day. My kids ask about five million times a day what we are having for dinner, and today I just told them they would have to wait and see. When that is my response, they all know something fun is on the horizon. Nathan even changed some plans for this evening so he would be here for dinner. He realized what I was creating when he saw me breaking the pretzels, but the rest of the kids were otherwise occupied and didn’t figure it out until the moment of final assembly. Sloppy joes with a few additions became a tasty bevy of Santa’s helpers. Yes, they did look more like dogs than reindeer, but a little imagination solved that problem. After our cadre of reindeer was completed, my crew hunkered down and ate every last antler. Seriously, I thought there would be some leftovers. I was wrong.
As for my kitchen, it is jam packed full of Christmas goodness. These are the moments when I wish I had just a bit more counter space. I’m so grateful my crew is willing to clean up when my creativity explodes all over the place. I have definitely made a lot of dirty dishes over the course of the past two days and there are more to come. But my clan will all be well fed time and time again over the course of the week and they know it, so they don’t usually complain too much. 😉
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