#206: 'Tis the Season of Ginger Baking

Two holiday ginger baking memories and recipe for ginger cookies.

Dec 02, 2023

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‘Tis the Season of Ginger Baking

Run, run as fast as you can
You can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread Man!

Gingerbread, ginger cake, gingersnaps, gingerbread people, gingerbread houses, and ginger tea! Over the decades, I’ve made them all.

One memory of my teenage years is when I was house and pet-sitting for a doctor’s family. I had been given free reign of their well-stocked pantry and kitchen and thought gingerbread men would be a fun way to welcome them back home from their winter holiday trip. When they came out of the oven, I set them on racks to cool and went to bed figuring that the next day I would make some icing and pipe on faces and buttons to bring the gingerbread people to life. I guess the cat thought it was a nice idea, too, because when I got up the next day I found that she apparently had leapt up on the counter to nibble on them!

My favorite might be this one from a few years back. I bought one of those gingerbread house kits and thought it would be a fun activity to do with family and friends. We do love crafts! I made space on the dining table and a few of us sat down to make heads and tails of the pre-made house and roof pieces. We glued them together using the icing from the tubes in the kit and added candy decorations. It looked pretty good but shortly after our cute, little, just-decorated house began to collapse. A few “Oh No’s!” were followed by a lot of laughter. And, thus was born our family tradition of the collapsing gingerbread house. I can’t wait for this year’s disaster!

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One Other Thing

When I injured my back this summer, the MRI also showed there to be a cyst on one of my ovaries. Over the past few months we have been watching “Cissy,” which is what I named this uninvited lodger. Well, appreantly “Cissy” likes it so much there that she has invited in a friend to lodge on my other ovary. So, Wednesday I will be having a laparoscopy to remove ovaries, tubes, and the uninvited squatters, and taking the week off to recoup.