Christmas Cookie Etiquette

So, I love my husband. I do. I love that we still really dig each other. I love that we’re in this for the long haul.

That being said, motherfucker is super inconsiderate when it comes to Christmas cookie etiquette.

Last Friday, we had a potluck at work.

After everyone had cleared out, I scrounged the dessert table because Randy and I are always looking for something sweet on a Friday night.

My office mate looked at my sad little napkin with a few buckeyes and some cookies and gave me a gallon bag half filled with cookies. “I didn’t put all my cookies out. You take these home with you.”

Well, fuck yes I will take your snickerdoodles home with me.

Buckeyes might be a regional thing. They are candies that are a ball of sweet peanut butter coated in chocolate and they look like a buckeye that comes from whatever tree produces buckeyes. I could look it up, but it’s sort of late and I don’t feel like it.

When I got home, I put the cookies and buckeyes on the counter.

Me: Do NOT eat all the cookies.

Randy:…

Me: Seriously?

Randy was looking at me with a flat expression that said “how dare you accuse me of even thinking about indulging in such a nefarious act.”

Randy:…

Me: Have you, or have you not, many times in the past eaten all the cookies without leaving me even one?

Randy: Yes.

Okay, so we have this entire conversation and we both end up laughing, even though we’re both a teeny bit annoyed with cookie crumbseach other. We move on and Skype with our mountain friends for a bit and, before we go to bed, I go to the kitchen to get my share of the buckeyes.

I brought home 4 buckeyes. There was one left.

Me: Dude?

Randy: What?

Me: Did you really eat 3 of the buckeyes? After the whole cookie conversation?

Randy: You said to not eat all the cookies.

Me: Are you fucking kidding me right now? It’s not just cookies. It’s all the sweet stuff. You have to share.

Randy: Well, you did just say the cookies.

Randy: Honestly, I didn’t see that last buckeye. If I had seen it, I would have eaten it.

Me: Hahahaahaha

Seriously, I can’t even fucking be annoyed because that was funny.

He’s also a music hog. Not even kidding.

He wants to decide what is playing all the time and while he is usually gracious when I insist I get my way, there are times he is downright pouty about it.

I am writing this Saturday night after attending my extended family Christmas party. Randy is cycling through the live cams he watches on Youtube. Apparently, this is what old people do on a Saturday.

I have to go check to make sure there is still half a pecan pie on my counter. We brought home cookies and pie from the party. The cookies are Middle Sister’s chocolate chip cookies which are the best cookies in the universe. Mine are pretty amazing and very nearly exactly the same as hers, but hers are just a tiny bit better. I already hid those.

The pie is just sitting there.

All I am saying is, I better get a piece of that goddamn pie.

 

Photo courtesy of Engin Akyurt

 

30 Thoughts.

  1. I’m feeling a tad of rueful recognition here. There are similar scenarios at our house. I’m pretty good about following requests like, “Don’t eat all the cookies, please.” However, after living with me for 38 years, my husband is aware that if the substance in question is ice cream, all bets are off.

  2. Promises about sweets are never upheld by my husband so if I want something I must hide it. That was difficult when we had our dogs who I swear he taught to find the cookie! Now with cats they could care less so my stash is safe!

  3. I don’t even try to bake anymore since I discovered Stella G’s Brownie Brittle (supposed to be like the crunchy edges of a just baked brownie). Chocolate-Chocolate Chip (a variety of others too) that they haven’t gotten the hang of packaging yet so they’re all broken in the bag, making it seem like you’re not really eating a lot (hahahaha). If ‘someone’ finishes the bag, there are still the crumbs (sprinkle over ice cream) and you can always go back to the store and get more. Or order on-line. Yum. Don’t care if I just finished breakfast, I think I’m going to get one now. I’m not getting a kickback from them y’all, just really love these morsels of goodness
    Happy Holidays!!!

  4. HAHAHA! Michelle, you’re so funny! Having lived in OHIO for many decades, and having attended The Ohio State University, I can tell you about buckeyes. The candy/cookie known as buckeyes resemble the buckeye nut that falls from the Buckeye tree! Glad Randy accidentally saved you one!

  5. Those little oranges? Mandarins or whatever they’re called? As soon as they’re brought in the house I say you’d better take what you’re going to want out o he mesh bag. It never happens. Then, when there are only 3 left and I say there are only 3 left it’s like sticking a hot poker into her, the wife I’m planning to divorce. Fuck. Did I or did I not say to take what you were going to eat? Yes, I did. so shut up about it already.

    We’re divorcing. I can see why. I have other plans that don’t include her. Just like she does everything without including me. Whatever.

  6. I miss cookies. I really do, and I don’t even like cookies.
    (It turns out I have celiac and after 57 years of gluten eating my body is all messed up, and now also sugar totally messes with me. I’m really mad at all the doctors I saw the first 57 years who heard me say my stomach hurts and my skin itches, the two biggest symptoms of celiac, and those jerks never even tested me. I’m mean, thanks doctor number 257, but what about the other 256 assholes?)
    I super miss apple pie, though. My daughter makes the best apple pie ever, mostly because she uses really really good northern spy apples. And cloves. She’s going to try and make the filling with non-gluten stuff and a non-gluten crust. I’ll splurge and have the sugar to have some of her pie. It will be worth it. As she said at age 3, “appa PIY!!”
    Hubby always saved treats for me. Not because he loves me or is generous, but because he counts calories and watches his weight and exercises and stuff, and is terrified of being pear-shaped. Maybe you could instill fear of pear-shaped in Randy?
    And now hubby knows better than to lay a hand on my little oranges! those are the only sweet I get, and he can just lay off. Or lose a hand. You know, his choice.
    Happy winter/christmas/holidays/solstice/hannakuh/new year’s to all!

    • That sucks about the celiac disease. My stepdaughter can’t have gluten, either. šŸ™

      Randy worried about being pear shaped? Nah, my big man has always been my big man…that isn’t gonna scare him away from cookies.

  7. I always thought buckeyes were chestnuts and, when you think about it, “buckeye” is a much better term because who wants a nut that tastes like a chest? Although I guess it depends on whose chest we’re talking about. And also if you think about roasting chestnuts in your oven make sure they’re deeply scored because when those fuckers explode they sound like shotgun shells.
    I’m kind of skirting around the obvious here which is that Randy owes you a buckeye but I’ve eaten up all the cookies too so I can’t be that hard on him.

  8. I’m pretty good at the sharing of food, read that I will announce when I’m about to start eating into the second half of anything, and offer to share the final portion.
    Also, as the cook, I actually like it when all of it gets eaten, because I usually end up finishing the last of everything myself.
    That said, Brenda sent us home from Thanksgiving with a container of pie, cookies, and candy (along with another container of dinner) and I got one cookie out of it.
    It was a really good cookie, though.
    I always wondered what “buckeyes” were about, why would anyone name their state after the eye of a buck? So now, thanks to this post, I know, and am somewhat relieved that it’s a tree and a nut instead of a deer’s eye…

  9. My husband is not a big sweets-eater, but the kids! Good grief! And now they’ve both moved out and I STILL have to hide stuff because the younger one grabs whatever she can find every time she comes home.

    Also it’s been way too long since I last had buckeyes. I have to try and talk older child into making some more.

    • Haha, yep..I was so happy when my son started eating a vegetarian diet. He used to pilfer my restaurant left overs which I would take for my lunch the next day. I can’t tell you how many I times I wouldn’t check, only to get to work and find my left over quesadillas had the tips bitten off and most of the insides scooped out.

  10. I am happy to confess that I am the sweet thief in our humble abode. I am sooo glad that you found your soul mate. I too have found mine and I love him with all my heart even though he has a speech impediment that causes him to refer to me as his cell mate. Time for some peppermint ice cream again!

  11. Hides feminist card because Iā€™m about ready to make a generalized gender statement lol. I wonder if thatā€™s a guy thing.

    I remember many an argument my parents had where dad would eat all of the candy. Thing is mom needed candy when her blood sugar level would drop and there were too many time when sheā€™d go into the drawer or send me and thereā€™d be like one mini bar left. As I got older I used to yell at him too about that because she legit had a reason that she needed more than one mini bar. I ā€œsolved itā€ in that I started putting a handful of them in her purse in hiding.

    Now normally my dad is very considerate and maybe this was passive aggressive or whatever and he would feel bad afterwards and do better for a bit but the man just seems to have a compulsion of eating most if not all of something. (Of course Iā€™m not saying Randy is as bad as my dad).

    On a final note donā€™t let there be popcorn in the house. The answer then became ā€œI figured I was the only one who ate itā€ when he knew that wasnā€™t true…but since he ate like a bag a day if you waited until the weekend you were shit out of luck.

  12. My family is weird. I thought I was safe, as a lover of salty/briny things. But I have met my match in my husband, when it comes to fresh, dill pickles. Not the mushy Vlassic spears – no. Those will sit, uneaten until the annual fridge clean-out. But a jar of Claussens has a half life of about 8 hours in our house. I’ve learned to grab 2, eat them and count the rest as a loss, because it is really damn hard to hide pickles.

  13. I have a cookie jar that Mommy supposedly made in a class, way back when (it’s a perfect beehive, so I think “Mommy made it” is just a family legend; not that Mommy didn’t make plenty of lovely, perfect things). If I’m feeling generous when I’m out shopping, I’ll buy the cookies that the husband likes. Then I put them in the cookie jar and wait for him to discover them. So a box of cookies lasts as long as it’s “supposed to” in our house, based on number of servings, because once he discovers them (several days later), all bets are off!
    The chocolate-covered coconut macaroons are MINE, though. I “hide” those suckers. šŸ˜‰

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