Going Nuts!

Last Sunday Dmitri was craving his favorite cookies - Russian nut cookies that actually don't contain any nuts and are safe for our nut-free Small Group. :) We all had had a really long nap, went out to Fazoli's as a treat, got home past 9pm and my honey got the dough going! The girls were thrilled and at first I was a little apprehensive - it was way past their bedtime and Emily had school the next morning! However, I quickly changed my mind - afterall, who cares about a late bedtime if they can make memories together with daddy who is gone so much AND make cookies that this pregnant woman loves??

"Play-Dough"

The girls had fun shaping the dough into little balls.

Here's the chef himself, checking out their work and making corrections.

And here's the amazing griddle. It's quite heavy and my mother lugged it all the way from Russia a couple of years ago. Apparently, those griddles were mass-produced many years ago and never again since. My mom and my sister had been actively searching for one for several years, and whaddaya know - on the same weekend they both got responses to an ad they had placed in the paper - living in two different cities! So, my mom traveled across the ocean with it and TSA was quite baffled by this... um... bizarre weapon.

Here are the baked nut halves.

The next step is filling them. Dmitri had boiled cans of condensed milk until it turned to gooey caramel.

Here is the final product!

And here's the final product on its way to my mouth! Yum!!!

So, lasting memories were made and the nuts... well, they are in our memory too now that they are all gone!