How it all started

I come from a very large, loud, loving Italian family. We had a tradition where we gathered every Christmas Season for weekend to make these wonderful fig cookies. My Granny started making these in 1956 with just a few relatives and making about 500 cookies. We stopped in 1989, by then we were busting out of kitchens and making 3000 cookies in one weekend. Many great times were had, lots of cackling laughter, many cold beers, and maybe a few tears thats also went into our cookies. We stopped when my Gramps had a stroke. My cousin Kelly was getting married this year, she got us together, and I am so glad she did. Hopefully we will get do this again in Dec. usually the first weekend for the twins birthday.

The Start

Here is Granny and Aunt Clair with the dried figs, The beginning of the whole process

Started the Grind

Here I am with my Mom and my Granny, we are just mixing all of the ingredients together, notice Carmen thinks she will have to worry about stray figs flying at her.

Mixing

This is Granddaughter-in-law Mandy mixing the fig with Granny looking on to make sure she is doing it right.

Teaching

Here is my Mom Carmen with her Granddaughter Jillian, she is showing her how to form the fig filling.

Forming the Filling

This is My Granny, her daughter Clair, her kids Joesph, Michelle, and Kelly working together to form the grinded up figs and other ingredients into rolls for the filling.

Assembly Line

Here is Casie, me, Michelle, my Mom Carmen, Jillian, Clair and Kelly working in unison rolling, filling and cutting the cookies.

Wedding Work-Out

Here' our Bride-to be Kelly feeling the burn. She pushed through and helped us with each step.

Rolling

That's my brother Tony and the groom, Chad rolling out the dough. We had to roll the dough until it was 1/8" thick. Sounds easy, but it can be quit a work-out.

Icing

Here we are icing the cooled cookies. No, all green isn't usually what we do, but that was the Bride's choice. When this tradition first started in 1956 white was the only color that was used. My Granny started using food color in the 70's. By using colors we could keep count of our efforts, 10 pink, 10 blue, etc. Of course through the years our colors got exotic for example Uncle Al made a wonderful shade we named pigeon do-do.

The reason we did it

These lovely ladies are my cousins Michelle and Kelly with our "Little" Granny in between. Well, Kelly the one in yellow was getting married and she wanted us to make some cookies as wedding favors.

The finished product

The is us, a small portion of my family, but enough to get together to make this family tradition. We have not made them as a family since 1989. So even though we were not all together, it was great. There was 4 generations making this batch. My Granny will be 89 in Oct. and my Daughter will be 1 on Aug. 29 and there was a few in between. We are planning on doing this again this Holiday season. I'll catch you up then.