People who bake Christmas cookies, I salute you. I have some serious Christmas cookie envy. Everywhere I look, they taunt me – on the cover of magazines, at the coffee shop, on Pinterest. When Yummi Yogi sent along some of their clever asana cookie cutters, I had visions of yoga Christmas cookies dancing in my head (omg! did you see the ones with the cookie yoga mats??). I had a special afternoon set aside to bake them with my daughter. The Christmas tree would twinkle in the background, and we’d listen to carols. Magical.

I made the dough while she was at school. Red and green dough, no less. I still have the food coloring under my nails. I had this feeling I should have savored that victory, maybe taken a picture of my gorgeous cookie dough. Because things sort of went south from there.

I’m a foodie and a great cook. But I can’t bake worth sh*t. Maybe I set myself up for this, by telling myself I suck at baking before I even try. Or maybe I should blame the altitude. I keep putting forth a valiant effort, because I am so entranced by the cookie beauty and the fantasy that maybe, just maybe, I could pull it off too. After this attempt, I am pretty sure I will be handing my Yummi Yogi cookie cutters over to our retreat chef for safe-keeping. Perhaps I don’t deserve them.

I found pictures on Pinterest of red and green striped cookies. I thought, that seems a lot less intimidating than trying to decorate them with icing and such. And I was feeling pretty good about the dough. But then we started rolling it, and the red and green would mix to make an icky not-so-Christmasy color. It took for-EVAH to get the alternating red and green stripes lined up (they make it look SO easy here!) Once we cut them, the poor yogi cookies got all bent out of shape when we tried to move them, and the stripes came apart. It’s been an HOUR and we only have two cookies on the damn baking sheet?? I told 8 year old to give me a little time to figure things out, as beads of sweat formed on my brow.

Another hour later: Mom, are we going to eat dinner? Six cookies on the baking sheet now. No wonder all those gorgeously decorated cookies at the coffee shop ain’t cheap. Then I put forth a last-ditch effort for some icing, for the OM symbols I had planned to pipe on as a finishing touch. Yes, for real. After a failed icing attempt that required I go to another room to recover, husband popped his head in to ask: Can I throw away the icing…? 

In the end, I have my six asana cookies (3 are pictured! woot!), and a hell of a lot of red and green dough that I told 8 year old she could go to town with. I think she is the baker in the family anyhow.