So Long, Farewell...2010! Hello...2011!

Don't get me wrong, 2010 has been a good year overall, but it certainly came with some personal challenges, that when I reflect on the past year, have most likely only made me stronger as an individual.   I am thankful for the ups as well as the downs that came my way personally, professionally, physically, emotionally, familially (Is that a word?  It is for now...), as such have only added to my character, added to my motivation to always do better in the coming year.  As 2010 draws to a close, I am thankful as always for My Little Family, consisting of Alex, Elena, and Katrina~we have one another with whom we are able to laugh, cry, hug, kiss, play, dance, learn from, and teach life lessons to on a daily basis.  We have good health aside from annoying winter colds that tend to stick around temporarily just to keep things real.  We have a blessed life full of loved ones from our large extended family who share their love, talents, and cooking prowess with us.  We have lovely friends who share their unique gifts, fun company, and sweet kindness with us.  We have the gift of tastebuds that help us to savor and appreciate every delicious bite of food that makes its way onto our palates from the kitchen. I have some growing loyal support for this new adventure in blogging I've stumbled upon that brings a smile to my face every time my fingers strike the keyboard to bring you taste of my life as Nom Nom Nom Mom.  I thank 2010 for being what it was~real...and actually quite delicious as well. It's my hope that 2011 comes with much happiness, good fortune, sweet love, more recipes and yummy adventures, and good eats for my family and for yours.

And in the tradition of my Filipino family, don't forget to ring in the New Year "right," by setting out a platter of 12-13 of your favorite round fruits to make it a prosperous year ahead.

My round fruits include: Pomelo, oranges, tangerines, limes, lemons, green grapes, red grapes, apples, cherry tomatoes, yellow sweet bell pepper, round slices of cucumber, cranberries

Don't know about you, but I'll also be sipping on some hot chocolate~not from the authentic Filipino Tablea Tsokolate~I often drunk hot at midnight with my parents, brothers, and "Te" (my "Aunt"/Nanny since birth, and now my Girlies "Lola Te") but hot chocolate nonetheless, maybe swigging a sip of champagne to follow, wearing polka-dotted clothing, carrying coins in my pockets, setting coins at the front door, jumping at midnight in case I have the chance of growing taller in my adulthood, turning on all the lights in the house, and banging on pots and pans just to name a few things to ensure that 2011 is a good year.  Granted, it'll be less elaborate than my own parents' Media Noche merriment and delicious feasting that they'll partake in at the stroke of midnight.  But since I am yet again a bit under the weather with the aforementioned winter cold, and the Girlies decided to sleep early for once, we decided it's gonna be a variation on the theme in the sweet confines of our home.  I am really looking forward to spending a quaint Eve with my own little family, as it should be...Besides, I have all of New Year's Day to spend with my large and loving extended family eating, eating, and did I mention eating...(More on that feast later...)

Now if you find my Filipino family's traditions wacky, here's a Delish link to some other globally "wacky" ways to ensure a fabulous year ahead, with food in mind.  Happy Nom Nom Nom-ing in 2011! Cheers!

Our little spread for Media Noche nom-nom-nom-ing...Cheers!

Twas 2 Days After Christmas...

...and apparently a toy store threw up in our house!!  Wow, my Girlies are very blessed and lucky Little Ones!  Thank you to Santa, and my large & loving & very generous immediate and extended family for all the love and presents Elena & Katrina received this year!  You truly are the best family a Gal can have!

Aside from the material generosity as well as loving generosity that has been shared by my family this Christmas, I am also so blessed and lucky to have a family that is just fantastic in the kitchen!  In preparation of this year's Christmas Celebration at my parents' house, my little family and a slew of Cousins gathered at my house days before the Holiday for our annual Christmas Cookie Baking Extravanganza!  I look forward to this event, as it's been going on for at least 9 years now!  Essentially, we get together to bake cookies, gossip, and in more recent years, make it a fun event for the newest bakers in the family such as my Girlies!  Now, I must admit, this year saw a lot more socializing vs. baking, but homemade yummy cookies were still the main result of the evening.  And although I did not take very many pictures of the Chocolate Crinkles, Christmas Cherries, Award-Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies, Spritz Cookies courtesy of a great recipe I tried from allrecipes.com, or Sugar Cookie Thumbprints that were baked with love this year, they all ended up on Santa's plate, and ultimately in his belly that I'm sure shook like a bowl full of jelly!  Here's a peak into the evening spent together to keep Santa happy:

And here's what Santa's plate looked like on Christmas Eve, filled with all the cookies we baked at the Extravaganza, along with some healthy options:

On Christmas Day, itself, a guest to our Celebration has to come ready to eat and be gloriously filled with delectable foods, both sweet & savory, traditionally American & traditionally Filipino, and all in all delicious.  We're not fancy, just foodies!  This year, we had so many things to eat: white rice (of course), my garlic mashed potatoes and creamy cornbread, my brother Rom's jellied cranberry mold with citrus & mint, a turkey roasted not only by my husband Alex, but one also roasted with an herb rub by Lola Te & Rom, a delicious honey-baked ham bought at a local establishment, Tita Marlene's pancit noodles, Lola Te's beef caldereta & filipino picadillo with raisins, Tita Lelet's boiled peanuts, wines by Alejos Cellars, and the piece de resistance: my cousin, Ate Gay's Rib Roast!  I'm full just reading the line up.  And don't forget the homemade cookies from me, my banana bread ala simplyrecipes.com, Kathy's Devil's Food cupcakes, and my MIL's pecan squares!  And now, I'm really stuffed!  But wait, don't forget to have a glass of wine, a cocktail, some mulled cider, a shot of Jagermeister or Jack Daniels while playing Catchphrase with the Cousins, Cousin Isabel's Orange Creamsicle shots (yum!), or Holiday Egg-Nog (though Rom was too pooped to whip some up...next year...).

And just to get an idea of what feasting at the Christmas Celebration with my side of the Family is like, here's just a taste:

I certainly hope your Christmas Celebration was blessed, fun, and delish!  Mine sure was, and it was especially lovely and scrumptious because of my large, loving, and fabulous family of naturally talented cooks, for serious! Happy Holidays to you & yours!

And now to think about what I will be serving for the New Year's Day feast we're hosting at my house...(sigh!).

Day Off from Work = Lots of "Work" Accomplished at Home

I had highly anticipated having this day off from work, as it landed just 3 days before Christmas with my enormous side of the family, 2 days before Christmas Eve with my hubby's family of less than enormous size, and 1 day before my annual Christmas Cookie Baking Extravanganza of Fun had with my cousins.  So all in all, this was a busy day of prepping for such events in anticipation of the Blessed Christmas Holiday, so I'm thankful for being afforded the day off from the family's business so that I could enjoy some of my own little family's busy-ness.

A bit of a set back with the start of the morning, beginning at 1:00am, though...My Girlies were rather feverish throughout the day yesterday, and although Elena seemed to recover fairly quickly from her grumpiness brought on by mild sickness, Katrina just did not seem to be able to fight the ill-effects of winter colds/coughs/fever, so she did NOT sleep well and was running a temperature throughout the wee hours of the morning.  And since I had a diet coke with dinner just hours before I intended to sleep, well, let's just say caffeinated & already sleep deprived working Momma+ feverish 2-1/2-year-old toddler who loves Momma=really poor night's sleep (yawn!).  Despite the poor start to the anticipation of my day off, I was determined to make the most of the time I had today to do everything I set out to do, and all in all I would say it was a rather relaxing yet wonderfully busy day at home with my little family.  And to make things even sweeter, some baking of deliciousness was accomplished amidst an hour of actually doing work work (couldn't resist...can't help but have the company's goings-on on my mind ALL...THE...TIME, plus there were organizational charts to be done...), loads of laundry cleaning, folding, and putting away, crazy tidying up of the house and its enormous messes created by my little family, reading books with my under-the-weather Girlies, taking temperature readings every so often to make sure no doctor's office visits needed to occur, requesting Alex to go to the grocery store for more baking needs (if I went, I would come back with the entire baking aisle...bad news bears), putting the last of the Christmas decor up for good measure, and squeezing in some easy meals so that none of us would waste away from hunger. I have to admit, I kinda liked the craziness of the at-home to-do list I tackled today with relative ease...Hmmmm, makes me want to ponder me in the life of a SAHM or at least a WAHM...hmmmmm....

Anyway, back to the most enjoyable part of my day off:  BAKING!  I was actually hoping to have done more than I had, but with the other to-do list items, I can't really complain...So, on today's baking short-list:

• 2 loaves of Banana Bread from the Simply Recipes site.  Love love love this quick & easy recipe! And I can't wait to share the love with my co-workers tomorrow when I'm back at the office for its Last Workday Before Christmas festivities (Who's my Secret Santa???)!
• A cookie sheet pan's worth of Tiny Apricot Almond Squares from the Land-O-Lakes site.  An easy and sweet treat that's sooooooo good with a cup of tea with a touch of vanilla creme!
• A good batch of citrusy Christmas Cherries, festive holiday cookies shared on The Pioneer Woman Cooks site.

Banana Bread ala simplyrecipes.com

Tiny Apricot Almond Squares, Land-O-Lakes style

Christmas Cherries thanks to The Pioneer Woman!

I hope you find these recipes and sites useful, festive, enjoyable, and most importantly nom nom nom-worthy for friends, family, and Santa!  Enjoy!

I Heart Chocolate Chip Cookies, Especially When Love Is Baked Into Them!

It's a shortened work week with Christmas in less than 5 days and the office closing on Friday in observance of Christmas on Saturday, but work at my family's company still must go on 'til 5pm hits on Thursday...To make the office environment a little more festive aside from the Holiday decor that lines the windows, entrance, and our reception area prettied up with a pretty Christmas tree, one of our kind marketing community liaisons brought us some extra holiday cheer in the form of her homemade and ever-so-delighful chocolate chip pecan cookies!  Dear Kim made quite the batch placed ever so sweetly in 2 baking tins in the front of our coffee station, and once it was announced that her cookies were in the house, whoa! did they go fast and furiously!  Kim's take on the tried and true Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe is absolutely enjoyable!  And quite surprisingly, I especially enjoy the fact that her version yields big chewy and chunky treats which also contain chopped pecans adding a little something something to the beautiful traditional flavor of the cookie.  I typically prefer to do without nuts in cookies, but Kim's cookies are just all the more perfect with the added crunch and texture of the pecans (not walnuts, not almonds, not hazelnuts, etc.).  So thanks to Kim for being so gracious and so generous this Holiday Season and always!  We're glad she's part of the Team, and we're glad she made this work week before Christmas all the more festive!

Thanks, Kim!  Cookies were awesome, as usual!

On another front, the reality of this week is that there's still work to be done at work...But in the meantime, my Girlies are on their Winter break for the next 2 weeks, and Alex is on vacation from work for the next 2 weeks as well! I'm rather jealous that I have to pop into the office for the next 2 weeks and thereafter, but such is life at times, no?! On the other hand, I am so thankful that my dear Girlies and their awesome Daddy get to spend some wonderful quality time together, including in the area of baking, which was one of the activities of the day, besides the Girlies playing in their fanciest dresses at 7:30am, under the watchful (read: sleeping) eye of my hubby/their father...(sigh!), while I got ready for work. So anyway, while I was busily walking up and down the aisles at work getting things done and trying to organize my desk, and complete my many to-do lists (unsuccessfully, ahem), Elena, Katrina, and Alex were busy following a cookie recipe found on the back of a lesser known chocolate chip package in the hopes of making gigantic cookie replicas of Sponge Bob (ugh!) & Dora the Explorer, and this is how they turned out:

An abstract interpretation of Sponge Bob Square Pants!

An abstract interpretation of Dora the Explorer!

So close, and yet...Well, it's all about the effort and quality time spent in the fun baking process, right? And I have to admit that the brown sugar that characterized this particular chocolate chip cookie recipe made it ever so chewy and scrumptious! It's the fun and love that went into the baking of it that also added to its yumminess, that's for sure!

I can't wait to take this Wednesday off from the office to prep for Christmas with my family...Of course, the goings-on at that office will forever be on my mind, but I'll be thinking of it and our hard-working employees while I bake some banana bread loaves for the following day's Christmas Fun at the Office festivities.  But I truly can't wait to take some quality time with my Girlies and Alex and bake with my loved ones as we excitedly await Christmas and all the blessings it brings!  That in itself is truly delicious!

All That Glitters...Is a Luxurious Cookie!

1st of all, I must say that I feel like I have not slept for days and that exhaustion has been my middle name as of late, but then I remember 'tis the season, and I think even just thinking about the hectic craziness of the beautiful Holidays is downright cause for this feeling of weariness.

But alas, I gain a 2nd wind when I have the chance to take a few minutes to write to you all.  And even better, I have chosen to showcase a fancy and sparkly cookie that my cousin, Irene (aka "Mia" I guess ;) , has perfected by way of a recipe she came across on the Epicurious site. Whenever there's a festive occasion in the family, the dessert buffet table becomes just a bit more glamorous, glitzy, gorgeous, and good-tastingly luscious with the presence of Glittering Lemon Sandwich Cookies!  These cookies are simply adorable but full of luxuriousness with a smooth and tangy lemon cream filling sandwiched between two little bonbon-like soft cookie clouds all gussied up with a roll in festively colored glittery sugar crystals!  The colors of the glittery sugars can be "customized" to fit the theme colors of the season/occasion, such as red & green for Christmas, or in the picture below, hot pink & sunburst yellow for a pretty princess's birthday, for example.

Any which way they're rolled, these cookies live up to their sparkling personality and just burst with bright flavor.  I must say, I am a bit intimidated in taking on the recipe myself, as I've only had them courtesy of my cousin's beautiful baking adventures...And they're just sooooo pretty and perfect, I'd hate to mess with the best.  But perhaps Santa's impending arrival will motivate me to try my hand at creating them this coming week as me, my Girlies, Alex, and my rad cousins come together a few days before Christmas for our annual Christmas Cookie Baking Extravanganza that we host at our digs (more on that later this week...)!  I hope you try your hand at taking this special epicurious.com recipe to bring yourself a little glitter and sparkle to your Holiday Season!  Enjoy!

Snickerdoodles for the Holidays!

So showcasing cookies during the Holiday Season is a lot more challenging than I thought.  I mean I know that there are other bloggers out there that have a cookie to talk about every single day of the year, but me being new to this whole thing, and then getting hit with a bad cold, and then having to plan a company holiday party, and then realizing Christmas is just about a week away, and then making sure Santa knows what the Girls & I (HA!) want for Christmas besides our healthy 2 front teeth and then some, and then wrapping classmates' Holiday presents, and then obviously being a mother, wife, employee, etc., etc....WOW!  Such a challenge to keep up on the cookie front. I mean I'm not trying to make excuses, but I just wish I had more time in my life to share the joy that the cookie brings me (sigh)... But when I do get a chance to take a timeout to breathe, I make sure it's a long and deep enough breath that affords me some baking time so that I can continue my pledge to bring you some of my favorite cookies of the season.

In this entry, I share with you the seasonably appropriate Snickerdoodle!  In so many ways, this particular cookie just screams Christmas to me.  Perhaps it's the fact that you basically roll a version of the sugar cookie doughball in the lovely combination of cinnamon and sugar.  Perhaps it's the sweet & spiced aroma that fills the kitchen air as the cookies bake away in the heated oven.  Perhaps it's kinda a staple on the cookie platter at Christmas time.  Whatever the reason, the Snickerdoodle cookie is surely one classic Christmas treat, best enjoyed by a toasty hearth while sipping a tall glass of milk or a cup of hot chocolate.  For your enjoyment, here's the recipe I borrowed from the Betty Crocker site.  It's sure to hit the spot!  Make sure you leave a few for Santa too!  And special thanks goes out to my dear mini-bakers, Elena & Katrina, who helped roll the dough in the cinnasugar mix and served as fabulous cookie taste-testers...

My Favorite Christmas Cookie

I've survived my bout of winter sickness, coupled with nearly a month's-plus-worth of crazy though memorable Holiday party planning for the family's company, all capped off by a beautiful stress-free and feel good kind of night last night, with lots of holiday cheer, eating, drinking, and being merry.  So, since I can breathe a bit easier, literally and figuratively, I can now concentrate more on continuing to share with you some of my favorite cookies, Christmas Cookies, to be more specific.  And since I felt fabulous enough to take on baking again after my rather less than healthy and hectic schedule as of late, I set aside some me time today to bake my all-time favorite Christmas cookie.  And rather fittingly it's a quite a simple one, rather classic, and oh so good...Kinda like me, right?!  HA! I chose to showcase the ever festive and Christmasy Chocolate Crinkle Cookie!

When the Holidays come around, I excitedly await the many fabulous friends, family, and acquaintances I've had in my life share what is my favorite cookie with me.  Now, don't be thinking that I have thousands upon thousands of pals sending me gift packages of Chocolate Crinkles on a daily holiday basis, but I do know about a handful of friends, family, and acquaintances that have shared with me their renditions of the classic cookie.  Receiving such a lovely, precious, and homemade with love kind of confection is quite a tasty gift in itself.  It's really nothing fancy-schmancy...In fact, quite the contrary, which is yet another reason why I love this cookie.  In the simplest of terms, the Chocolate Crinkle is like a cute little cakelike brownie cookie with confectioners' sugar rolled on the doughball prior to baking, where when basking in the warm glow of a 350-degree oven  for a mere 12 minutes, it turns into a dark chocolately brown domed disk of delighfulness crinkled with the powdery sugar which creates a pretty mosaic canvas absolutely good enough to eat.  Now that I read that description again, it's absolutely delicious~a CAKElike BROWNIE COOKIE~3 types of dessert all rolled into 1...and even better, all rolled in powdered sugar!  The Chocolate Crinkle Cookie is a win-win-win situation!  I happened upon the Williams-Sonoma recipe for Chocolate Crinkles, and I respectfully share the link with you here.  Their recipe uses such pure and simple baking ingredients.  It's quite easy to make in no time, and it makes the perfect amount in a jiffy so that you can eat them right away! Trust me, my Girlies and Hubby could not wait for them to cool, and I only have a few left from the 2 dozen that the recipe typically yields!  Such a winner of a cookie!  I hope you enjoy the Chocolate Crinkle...I hope it becomes or remains a Holiday favorite of yours...I hope you share the simply perfect cookie crinkled with sweetness with someone special this Holiday Season!  Enjoy!

From this mound of dry ingredients...

to this mixed up powder of goodness...

to a quick and easy cookie dough like this...

to a roll in some sweet confectioners' sugar...

and finally to my faves~Chocolate Crinkles!

Nothing a Cookie Can't Cure...

So I've been hit by a nasty cold & cough for nearly a week, with the worst of the symptoms being felt physically by me and emoting themselves rather grouchily for my poor Little Family to deal with over this past weekend.  Hence, my little break in the showcase of my favorite cookies for the Holiday Season.  I mean I felt so incredibly horrible that I barely had any interest in obsessively checking my Facebook page or seeing how many views my little blog had gotten in the past few days.  And to make things worse, I had no energy to cook, bake, or eat (gasp!) ~ mostly because of a little bug that brought on huge feelings of tastelessness, literally!  But, you know, in the midst of me feeling like the life was being sucked out of me, there was one thing that I actually delightfully savored in my few days of lacking in the senses of smell and taste, all in the form of a box of cookies known as Joe-Joe's from Trader Joe's!

Despite my attempts at eating in order to garner me some energy, nothing tasted like anything, except my delightful little chocolate cookie sandwiches with the vanilla creme center, bespeckled with lovely hints of vanilla bean flavor.  This all-natural cookie was the only thing worth eating, smelling, and tasting in my few days of misery!  And when I paired it with a piping hot cup of darjeeling tea with a splash of vanilla creme, the sweet flavor of this store-bought cookie came out even further for me to appreciate.

Perhaps some may liken a Joe-Joe to the more well-known Oreo cookie, but I must say, TJ's Joe-Joe's are the clear winner in my cookie book.  I find the taste of the Joe-Joe to be more appealing and gentler on my palate...not so bitter an aftertaste, but brightened by the lovely vanilla notes that the creme-filled center contributes to one's mouthful.  And if this cookie is strong enough to make my not-so-healthy and senseless palate come alive again, you know it's something special!  I may even nom nom nom on a few of these before I hit the hay in order to get an extra special dose of "medicine" to rid me of this lingering icky feeling...

Next time you're at TJ's pick yourself up a box, or the seasonal Candy-Cane Joe-Joe's, especially before the Big Guy in the Red Suit comes down the chimney in a few weeks!  It'll be just what the Jolly Dude ordered for a cold and wintry evening to warm the heart and clear the mind.

And the Winner for Best Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies Goes to...

AWARD WINNING BEST SOFT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES!  Yay!  And so it goes that this is the 2nd cookie I wish to showcase in my quest to share the in the Spirit of the Holidays via the beloved COOKIE,  and all the goodness and good eating that comes with it.  I learned about this spectacular soft, cake-like version of the traditional chocolate chip confection from my friend, Kim, when she graciously brought a beautiful batch over one day while she and her husband came to visit us...The moment my lips hit the cookie, I fell in love!  The recipe is an extremely popular one on allrecipes.com  ~ a website that I, and obviously my friend, reliably go to time and time again for tried and true favorite dishes and desserts.  I just absolutely love the texture and flavor of this cookie ~ so soft, so light, so cake-like, so delectable in every bite!  And the fact that it makes use of a "secret" ingredient in vanilla instant pudding mix is quite interesting and rather noteworthy!

Now, although the pictures below look totally different, keep in mind the photo from allrecipes.com was most likely professionally mastered, while my photo comes straight from the hands of one who is NOT a professional photographer, but I at least baked them up with a lot of love for my dear loving little family and that should certainly count as photo-worthy ;)   Most importantly, however, both batches taste equally as scrumptious.

My batch of the Award-Winners

courtesy of allrecipes.com 

These are a must bake, must eat, and must share kind of cookie to spread the love, especially this Holiday Season!  Make sure to bake a batch with the ones you love!  My Girlies and Alex absolutely adore them.  And of course, make sure to leave a few out for Santa!  Enjoy!

'Tis the Season...

A light dusting of snow on December 1st in the Chicagoland Suburbs, only 20-some degrees outside, winter hat, coat, mittens, scarf, and boots being worn to keep warm, crazy bargain shoppers at the stores and doorbuster hours, fireplace ablaze with a warm hearth, the smell of cinnamon in the air, Christmas lights adorning the outdoor landscape, Christmas Tree lit in our house, and the 1st Menorah candle lit in other households...It's definitely the Holidays!!

Considering all of this and in preparation for the Season to be Jolly, I've decided that I would like to share my favorite cookies~store-bought, homemade, given, received, baked, eaten, etc., etc.~with all of you, and culminating in sharing such with Santa on the Night he comes down our Chimney to leave Elena's & Katrina's wishlist of toys at the foot of the tree. When I think of the Holidays, a smile instantly appears on my face.  Some reasons being that it's a favorite holiday, my Girlies love the opportunity to circle EVERY SINGLE TOY in EVERY SINGLE TOY CATALOG that lands at our doorstep in the hopes that some circles might actually end up with the rest of the playful mess that is the playroom, my out-of-towner brothers come in for our Sulit Family's Christmas Day Extravaganza of Deliciousness, but gleefully I love that in terms of sweets that remind me of the Holidays, my favorite sweet/dessert is showcased:  the COOKIE!!!  With that said, I will take every opportunity leading up to Christmas Day and perhaps beyond for good measure to showcase some of my favorite cookies.  Some will be classics, some perhaps gourmet, some the epitome of Christmas, some easily store-bought, and ALL definitely yummy in the tummy.

For the 1st cookie to be showcased as I make my way through these Holidays, I start with a rather new find to me, and one I just can't seem to get enough of.  This particular cookie is of the store-bought variety, albeit specialty food store, and worth every penny.  On a recent trip to the local Italian deli/grocery store, I happened to browse their cookie aisle since I love cookies, and was intrigued by the little glossy sack that contained little bits of semi-sweetness in the form of  Loacker Quadratini Dark Chocolate Bite Size Wafer Cookies!

Every bite size is full of delicious sweetness!

They are simply delicious. I believe these sweet bites come from a European company. German company with an Italian-like cookie, perhaps. Hmmm, now I see what attracted me to them...a German/Italian confection.  I am married to a dude of German/Italian heritage, who coincidentally has quite the sweet tooth for sweet confections. Apparently, I have an affinity for this specific combo...And there you have it ;)  Ha! Now they are actually wafers, though I think I would still classify them as cookies, or perhaps more specifically as wafer cookies, and apparently the company concurs as noted on the front of the glossy bag.  Nonetheless~so delicious. I am honestly satisfied with having 2, maybe 3, maybe 4 at most, by themselves or while sipping coffee or tea or a glass of skim milk, but I am more satisfied when I know I have a rather full bag of them from the specialty grocery store to replenish my craving at a moment's notice. Katrina also has gain an appreciation for the dark chocolate wafer cookie...then again she just appreciates food in general!  I happened to find my bags of wafer cookies at 2 locations near me: Frangella Italian Imports and at Green Food & Produce.  Both places carry European food items, including the Loacker Wafer Cookies in a variety of flavors.  I've also heard that you can find these yummy morsels at Trader Joe's~score! I highly recommend you search for them the next time you stop into a specialty European food store or TJ's! Again, worth every penny, worth a try, and worth a spot on the cookie plate for Santa's arrival!  Sweet Season's Eatings! Enjoy!