Happy Christmas Trilobites

Yesterday was kind of crazy, in the sense of running around town for hours and finally getting home seven hours after leaving... only to turn around and head back out to pick Matt up from work two hours later. The jeep is finally fixed, though, hopefully; the misfires did follow the suspect coil when they switched it to a different cylinder, so that's been replaced and so far we haven't seen the check engine light back on.

Unfortunately, the incredibly off-schedule day meant that somebody took less than an hour total of nap, and was very cranky indeed by supper time. Ever the optimist (i.e. Ack, there are so many things left on my to-do list!!!), I thought I'd try to make a batch of cookies after supper before bedtime anyway. Easy cookies. Quick cookies. Spritz cookies.

My mom recently passed along a spare cookie press she found, and I've been excited to try it. For some reason, a cookie press is one of the unique tools that I've always associated with people who are pros at baking, so having one of my own makes me feel a little more confident that I'm "doing it right." I know, it's silly. And I certainly don't think that you have to have a cookie press to do Christmas cookies properly! It's just a prominent memory from childhood, I guess.

Last week I took a photo of Mom's spritz cookie recipe, so I pulled that up and followed along with the faded, smudged, well-worn instructions. Some of the steps--and ingredients--seemed kind of strange, but they apparently didn't set off enough warning bells until it was too late: Matt and Little Bear came into the kitchen to watch me work the cookie press, and Matt swiped a bite of dough. And made a face. "What is in this? And what shape are you making those?" 

Apparently, lime trilobites just don't say "Christmas".

In retrospect, how did it not occur to me that surely I would remember if my mother had actually mixed a packet of lime jello into the cookie dough each year? If I don't remember ever, ever seeing that happen, surely she used food coloring instead? I can't count how many times in the past few months I've asked for a recipe and she's handed me the card, but with a whole bunch of caveats: don't use X, use Y; double the spices; you really don't need to use all that sugar; I don't really make it like this. My mom's recipe cards are more like guidelines, really.

And lime. Of course I picked lime; my husband doesn't like sweet citrus. Now there are heaps and mounds of lime-flavored trilobites in my kitchen, and no one but myself and possibly the toddler to eat them. I guess I have something unique to give our neighbors!

On the plus side, the cookie press works great! There's about one more tray worth of green dough in the freezer; if I decide it's worth pulling it out and baking those too, I'll try to find the tree die instead of the trilobite!