Yes. Somewhere, deep within world spam headquarters, an extremely small-hearted bot decided that Simmer would be a good place to nest. Simmer Till Done is under spam attack. Serious spam. You know the kind I mean – male-pharmaceutical pick-me-up last-for-four-hours spam. Several weeks ago I began seeing unusual search terms. I usually see searches for “spritz cookies” or “Cleo’s pumpkin biscuits” or, may she rest in egg noodle peace, “Aunt Rose’s kugel.” What I don’t see too often: “how do I get free Viagra from Canada?”

What does it mean? It means links to this blog don’t work well, and our subscriber list is shot. It means every word I type* is attached to Internet ads for medical male assistance. It means when legitimate kugel-bakers Google a Simmer recipe, they now find odious pharmaceutical spam. It is most discouraging. What would Aunt Rose think?

Sigh. Let’s just look at latkes.

I feel better already.

The tech elves are working to fix Simmer – but I should note that this is the last post until we’re hack-free. The next time you read Simmer Till Done it will – hopefully – have a new design, spam-free archives and a happy, refreshed writer at the helm. In the meantime, I wish you the happiest of holiday seasons, full of golden potatoes and tart applesauce, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding or a marvelous onion-soaked brisket, like the one Cleo is so interested in, below:

Sigh (second sigh). Why can’t Labradors provide tech support?

* not every word you type, just me. Feel free to add your spam-safe commiseration.

But it is never just once. I’m a habitual yes-girl, and what’s worse, the ideas – even today – are frequently of my own making, things I was not even asked to do. I propose an idea and everyone says “yes!” and I say “of course!” and twelve hours later I’m hunched over a counter, glaring at a mixer. I’d like to say I never learn, but somewhere after 38, I did.  The ghosts of three “sures!” past – all holiday, all gingerbread, all crazy – finally taught me to keep my sweet mouth shut.

Street of Broken Dreams

Fresh out of culinary school, I’m working for an overly ambitious guy at a do-everything shop in Chicago’s Old Town.  We plan our holiday open house, and even though I am already baking pastry, working catering, designing the menus and refereeing romantic staff spats, I raise my dorky hand.  How about a gingerbread Armitage Street?  Shops, snow, icing, lights?  Everyone seems pleased, and I work all week on the sugared city scene. It’s a candlelit hit at the open house, and I’m clapped on the back all night. But my eager-beaverness soon earns me every job that no one wants.  A famous name is brought in at great expense to draw customers and boss me around. In the end, Ambitious Guy declares bankruptcy and closes shop.

A Model Relationship

Older and ostensibly wiser, I am brought into a restaurant to whip the bakery kitchen and staff into shape.  The owner wants a partner, and says it will be me, in time; he has a difficult reputation but I believe him, and work my little heart out.  Christmas rolls around and – surprise! – I’m outside, sketching the restaurant for a gingerbread model.   I work on this one at night, at home, after work and when Josie sleeps.  On my tiny kitchen counter I cut through gingerbread slabs with an X-acto, and then a knife, and finally a hacksaw.  The iced model goes on display, and it too is a hit – customers ooh and ah over the little white bricks and candy awnings all week, but before New Year’s, Difficult Guy decides maybe…maybe he doesn’t need a partner.  I hang up my apron, but the gingerbread stays.

How the Cookie Crumbles

I didn’t even work there. My friend owned a little gourmet shop, and was brainstorming holiday windows. I suggested a gingerbread Eiffel Tower. Would I have time, with a toddler and a catering business? Oh, sure. Why not?

Glaring at twenty pounds of dough three days later, I wasn’t sure.  My design was clear but painstaking, and as the baked brown slabs filled my dining room, tagged with yellow Post-Its – “2nd level left,” “tower deck B,” “base foot DON’T CUT!!” – it became a dark architectural headache. I was thrilled when we set it safely in the window, aglow with tiny lights. My friend’s door clanged with jingle bells, and shoppers brightly elbowed and jostled for truffles and sausage and cheese. People took pictures, the local paper came, and my friend loved it, too – she loved it so much that weeks later, when royal icing began to crack off, she refused to take it down.

“Please take it down,” I’d say. “The season’s over. It’s porous, you know – not meant to last forever.”

But she would not, and there was some argument over who the tower belonged to – me, the rightful baker, or her, owner of the window. I gave in – yes, keep it up – and it sat there falling apart bit by bit, which is more than I can say for our friendship, which fell apart immediately.

So. What have we learned?  Be careful with saws in the kitchen. Don’t glue monuments with egg whites, and don’t eat raw dough before sunrise. Enjoy playing holiday elf, and if you’re able to say yes, say yes. But if you just can’t say no, tread gingerly.

Happy Holidays!

If you wish to build your own, here’s the sedimentary diagram of the club:

* Toasted Potato Bread
* Mayonnaise
* Crispy Thick-Cut Pepper Bacon
* Fresh Spinach
* Baby Swiss Cheese
* Roast Turkey
* Cranberry-Cherry Balsamic Relish
* Toasted Potato Bread

(Yes, Potato Bread and no, I don’t think that carb can get any more white)

Where people take the freedom to express themselves very seriously.

Where people are creative with their independence.

Where you can be the big kid in the neighborhood parade.

Where you can stick your tongue out and be who you are.

Happy 4th from all of us at the red, white and new old house! Have a wonderful time.

I don’t care that’s it getting a bit warm outside.

When quiche calls, you answer. Crank up the air, flour your hands and keep the butter cold.

So what if this blog has been Quiche’d with Lorraine-love before? Slice that cheese! Dice that bacon! Pay no attention to the calorie-counter behind behind the curtain.

It’s a holiday, so get in there and make some. Try my favorite Quiche Lorraine recipe of all time, the one that has graced many a brunch table – and dinner plate, and, um, small snack plate – here. Happy Quiche Day!

We commemorate the triumph with, um, a three-cornered cookie. And I dutifully made the three-cornered cookies, and did something our ancestors did not do, I photographed the cookies for the sacrificial blog and uploaded them to the holy site of Flickr.

Last night, I thought “it is time to blog those cookies.” And I wanted to give you accurate hamantaschen reporting you can trust, so I went Googling for a little history. Know what I found?

Almost immediately, I saw “Craving Hamantaschen” at the MenuPages Blog, Boston edition.

I glanced at the picture. Mmm, good-looking hamantaschen. Wait a minute….blue-rimmed plate…nicely filled cookies…familiar cotton napkin…Sweet Sugared Haman! I showed it to Greg.

“Yeah, those look good,” he said.

Notice anything?

“Well, no…hey, is that our plate?”

Uh-huh. That is our dining room table, too.

The bad news: someone beat me to the punch with my own cookies! The good news: because they gave me credit, I decided that this blatant cookie-swiping would not prevent me from giving you the post you deserve.

Hamantaschen are traditionally made with poppyseed or prune filling, but modern versions include everything from chocolate chip to mango to peanut butter. Greg grew up making these cookies every year with his Grandma Bertha, who would just as soon fill hamantaschen with peanut butter as run naked through the streets.

In our house, sweet poppyseed filling, or mohn, still rules.

Something our forebears never thought of: the food processor.

If only Haman had owned a black lab. He would have been a much nicer person.

The chilled sugar dough gets rolled and cut into circles, then topped with the poppyseed.

Purists will make their own fillings, but as I see it, we didn’t survive thousands of years so that I could stand around grinding seeds. Solo fillings – poppyseed, prune, apricot, cherry – are available in most supermarkets and work very well.

Make a triangle using your thumbs and forefingers – these are the hamantaschen fingers. Use them to pull up three sides of a filled cookie circle, pinch them together, and form a neatly stuffed triangle.

Repeat, bake, enjoy.

If you are lucky enough to live in cities like Chicago or that other city, New York, you can buy super-sized hamantaschen at bakeries year-round. Or you can try filling a few of your own right now. They say at St. Patrick’s Day that you don’t have to be Irish. To enjoy hamantaschen, you don’t have to be Jewish.

Just snack-ish.

Cookbook author Joan Nathan’s hamantaschen recipe is delicious. Give it a try!

When treats start attacking, it’s time to go back to school.

I only hope that they can re-attach a special adolescent bionic hand.

And that it makes beds.