The Blogging Makes You Fat Blog: Like a good Jewish girl...

Even though we got more lights for our Christmas tree, and my mom brought around some string for the baubles, I wanted to put my own touch on our first living Christmas tree. I saw Nigella recently make her Christmas Decorations on her show, Nigella's Christmas Kitchen. They looked so beautiful, and it was so nice to see her include her kids in the making and decorating of these cookies.

It's quite interesting that Nigella is SO into Christmas, and many people love her for her Christmas recipes, when Nigella is 100% Jewish. But you wouldn't really know that when seeing how she is always so keen to put out a holiday spread.

As a kid, my relationship with Christmas was a strange one. For years, my sister and I begged my parents to have a tree, just like everyone else. So we had a fake one for a few years.. but, like other Russians, we actually put it up for New Year's... That came in handy that one year we decided to get a real tree, because soon after the 25th of December was over, people would start throwing out their real trees by the side of the highway. My parents would drive up and snatch one of these hand-me-down trees, and that is how we got our first real tree. But, of course, none of this had to do with religion. It was because we were kids and we wanted what other kids had. Once we got older, we didn't have a tree around any longer.

Fastforward to now, and I once again have a tree in my home. But this time, it is because I am married to someone who actually celebrates Christmas. But, oddly, I don't think he had Christmas trees growing up either, in Spain. There, it is more about the religion, and they would always have a nativity scene.

So, for our tree, I wanted to make homemade decorations. Part of me is just really in the mood to bake, but knowing that I shouldn't eat all the cookies myself, it is better that they go on the tree.... Though a few cookies didn't turn out as I'd like.. and so, I had to sample them, for the greater good. Mmmm, they were yummy. {Nigella mentions to put black pepper in the batter, to stop the children from stealing them off the tree. But, I can't do that to perfectly good cookie batter. It's good that I didn't because I only ended up using half the batter for the decorations.}