A few times this winter, I have found myself at home, curled up in a chair, craving hot chocolate. Real hot chocolate, not reconstituted powder. The kind that is the favorite drink of a little detective named Hercule Poirot. One little problem - I'd never made real hot chocolate before. The first night, I experimented with 12 Hershey kisses and half a cup of milk, melting the chocolate in a double boiler and then adding in milk and a half pinch of salt. It was quite good and definitely satisfied my craving...for the next 48 hours or so. 
It was a timely experiment because later that week a Colombian friend made hot chocolate and gave me a few pointers. I found Goya chocolate at Publix (this is Miami) and followed the instructions with the ratio of one chocolate finger to 3/4 cup of milk. I added a little salt and cinnamon for depth and drank away to utter delight. Yum! The only problem now is how to keep this from becoming a nightly habit. 
Every Christmas my Mom, sister, and I make sugar cookies - the same recipe baked by the sheetful and slathered with colorful butter cream frosting. It is one among many traditions that my Mom has instilled in our holiday, although it is the only one I know that pre-dates the arrival of her kids, and the only one with a necessity I have never really questioned.
When my Mom was about 16, she decided to bake sugar cookies. I can just see my Granny looking on with a look of quiet observance, as if she would neither be surprised nor moved if the cookies turned out to be the best in the world or if they caught fire in the oven. My Mom continued to bake the same recipe every year, giving them to the multitude of relatives and friends that comprised her small town. One year, so the story goes, she doled out 150 cookies. It may have been the first thing my Mom did in the kitchen that was hers - without help, without guidance, without it being her father's favorite or her grandmother's best dish. Unlike my maternal great-grandmother, my sister, and myself, my Mom was never a culinary spirit. She doesn't particularly enjoy preparing or creating food. Her enthusiasm about these cookies is unrivaled. My sister and I picked up on this at an early age, and have since always tried to display equal enthusiasm, even in teen years on a pertual diet or miles away in China where my sister missed out on the cookies this year but was with us in spirit saying that I should write about them on my blog.
SUGAR COOKIES (makes about 40-50 cookies)
As a child, I didn't touch the cookies without the rich butter cream frosting. I also liked to make the colors as deep and psychedelic as possible. I'm still crazy with the food coloring paste but also like the cookies bare.