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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wombat" data-source="post: 2649627" data-attributes="member: 8447">Massive nostalgia by way of ofrendasI love the holidays.  Growing up we tended to do a lot of scrimping and saving, but then the period between Hallowe'en and New Year's Day was blowout city.One Hallowe'en treat I always remember with fondness was my mother's owl cookies.  Make two batches of sugar cookie dough, one plain, the other with cocoa powder.  Form the plain dough into a tube; wrap the chocolate dough around this tube.  Cut off circles.  Put two circles side by side and pinch together slightly.  Pinch a bit of the chocolate dough at the top to form "ears".  Put a butterscotch chip in the middle of each plain circle.  Put a whole cashew at the bottom for a beak.  Voila!  Owls!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Thanksgiving was pumpkin pie by the overflow method, chestnut stuffing, duchess potatoes, and enough peas to make even me happy.  Oh, and some more pumpkin pie -- sometimes even some left over for the next day so we could have it really cold  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />But Christmas was my father's territory.Every year my dad baked for Christmas.  That baking would traditionally start in September when he prepared the fruitcake.  This is a old family recipe we called "Black Bread Fruitcake".  When it came out of the over it was a desert tan colour, but then it was put into cheesecloth and doused in brandy.  A week later it was turned and doused again.  And again.  And again.  By Christmas it was finally ready -- do not leave open flames near the thing or it will explode!But most importantly my father baked cookies.  Quite literally he baked hundreds of dozens of them.  Liebkuechen, speculatius, apricot-brazil nut rounds, scotch reels, chocolate almond shells, gingerbread, colonial gingerbread (a recipe he found in Williamsburg), spritz in infinite varieties, bon bon cookies, orange shortbread stars, Scottish shortbread, Dutch Butter Slices, and on and on and on.  One year he bought a second freezer just to fill with cookies!As a kid, things like Oreos were exotic treats; we would eat these cookies from St. Nicholas Day straight through to March (sometimes April), even after giving them away by the overflow method.  Mountains of cookies churned out from his stalwart Kitchen Aid mixer and his marble slab.I miss those cookies.  I miss my dad.</blockquote>

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