Tag Archives: Family

Emma’s First Florida Christmas

(Note: If you are new to my blog, read these two stories first; Slow Pirouette for the Dancing Girl and The Baby Powder Incident.)

Caption: Christmas with my first foster mother, 1 year old.

Caption: Christmas with my first foster mother, 1 year old.

Caption: Christmas with my first foster mother, 1 year old.

Twenty years ago this Christmas, I had recently moved to live with my grandparents in Florida. I left my foster home with Pearl in Boston with just the clothes I had on. I arrived at a house on the water with gardenia bushes out back with no toys and nothing to wear. I was starting over in the Sunshine State. I turned eight the month before Christmas. Continue reading

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The Holiday Table (Recipes and Photos)

It’s 7:30 on Christmas Eve. Grandma and I have already made the Christmas cookies. She watched over me earlier in the week as I lightly rolled the date balls, still warm from the oven, in a thin layer of confectioner’s sugar on the counter top.

The almond crescent cookies took me a few Christmases to master, but on this particular year I had gotten the hang of shaping them without handling them too much. If you heat the dough up with your fingers too often, the dough hardens and the cookies become both hard and brittle. Continue reading