My father’s family was Jewish. If my mother’s family ever had a religion, they chose not to share it with their children. Neither of my parents were even the slightest bit religious.

Holidays at my parent’s house were crow-assembled: bits and bobs of different traditions—nothing sacred, nothing pure; nothing consistent from one year to the next.

So, when the holidays come up over the horizon, I don’t have a lot of rituals to cling to. The tidings I crave are really just two baked goods that were usually to be found in my parents’ kitchen around the end of the year:

1. chocolate gingerbread cookies (light on the ginger, heavy on the cloves);
2. popovers.

If you don’t know what a popover is, or you’ve never had a good one, I weep for you. I’ve made them so many times that I don’t even need a recipe.

The same can’t be said for the cookies: the recipe my mother used came from her mother who usually sourced her recipe’s from her friends and her bridge club.

My grandmother passed earlier this year. I hadn’t spoken with her, or anyone else on that side for years. Originally, this was because of a legal battle over her estate, of which I was trustee for a time; in the final year, because I’d come out as trans, and that was a few bridges too far for their brand of 1950’s liberalism.

Thankfully, I was able to find a recipe online that lined up well with my memory of the key ingredients. I made them last night, and the results were deeply soothing.

Highly recommended.

goodlifeeats.com/recipe-exchan

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Kitchen Knowledge 

Brown Sugar is just sugar mixed with molasses. 😘

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myna.social

Basic models of flocking behavior are controlled by three simple rules: 1) separation: avoid crowding neighbours (short range repulsion); 2) alignment: steer towards average heading of neighbors; 3) cohesion: steer towards average position of neighbors (long range attraction). With these three simple rules, the flock moves in an extremely realistic way.