These are my grandmother's favorite Christmas cookies. A basic butter cookie with an orange-honey glaze, the dough is
very pleasing to put together because of the scent that lingers on your fingers from the fresh orange juice and grated orange peel. They are then dressed with a honey-orange glaze and topped with chopped walnuts. I cannot reproduce the recipe here, because it's a family secret. Got it? No recipe. Thus this entire post is a teaser.
And I'll tell you why that's fair: every year at Christmas-time, the Modern Language Association holds its annual job-hunt/meat-market/fish-bowl convention. Folks hoping to obtain a job teaching in the Humanities in an institution of higher education, many of whom are under-employed as adjunct faculty or office drones or baristas, are required to spend upwards of $1,000 traveling to this convention in order to give interviews, if they are fortunate to have them.
But if one
were,
hypothetically, following my family's recipe for these scrumptious cookies, one might consider pulsing the butter and flour together in a food processor, but not too long because it should be light and fluffy.
This year's MLA is in Philadelphia, the week after Christmas. Three years ago when I commenced my tenure-track professorship quest, after an agonizing eight hours in a shopping mall, I spent over $200 on the most charming black and grey tweed Calvin Klein suit (with a slightly flared skirt) to wear to my interviews. Since last MLA (in San Francisco) I managed to gain enough weight to not fit into the Interview Suit. This has provoked a crisis in our community.
In fact, these cookies can hardly be thought of as innocent in my, um,
augmentation.
However, if one were to persevere and figure out the recipe, one might like to know that one must refrigerate the dough for at least an hour before rolling it out.
There will be NO dough in my fridge this year, as I am now desperately following the MLA diet. Yes, dear reader, this means that I have been granted
two interviews. And in lieu of purchasing a larger suit for the slim chance of a campus visit, I will lose the ten pounds preventing me from wearing Calvin without busting the seams.
But if one
had chilled the dough, one would eventually like to roll it out about 1/8" thick, select several cookie cutters, solicit some assistance, and cut out shapes to bake. See the charmingly plump dough-children? I will
not resemble them two weeks from now, in Philadelphia.
After baking them one glazes them. One might be deserted by one's helpers at this point, because picking cookie cutters is fun, while painting cookies with glaze is tedious and sticky. But all under-bakers and assistants swiftly return to sample these treats. Except those attending the MLA, who are neither baking this year, nor sampling. No, we are a committed lot: we are eating air, and we will get a job!
