Ring Bell for Service!

Poor grandchildren. Can you imagine? They've never been to a cafeteria! Not one of them! Never once enjoyed the experience of steering a plastic tray down a stainless steel counter. Never once placed their own rolled napkin of "silverware" alongside a cold drink, all the while peering ahead, anticipating. Some of my own best memories are dime store encounters with fluorescently lit food, mother beside me, encouraging something tasty and new. The best part was choosing - all on my own!

Grandkids these days! Far too soft on dining experiences, I'd say! Too much sitting at fancy tables, waiting to be served! Tsk tsk! Time for some old fashioned "do-it-yourself-ing." Time for grandma to step up and abolish "plated dinner syndrome" for once and for all!

I borrowed Mrs. Santa's brand for the cardboard box cafeteria I constructed for lunch at my annual Grandma's Christmas Cookie Baking Party. This year is our fourth event. And the kids are so ready for dining in style the way I did when I was their age!

Allow me now to escort you down the line in nostalgic imitation of simpler, tastier times!

Ring bell for service! This summons a scurrying grandma, a line up of hungry customers, and an audience of adoring parents!

You'll want to take a tray first. And a bottle of cold milk. Grandma's no pastry chef, but somehow those cookies not only managed to look like wreaths but they slipped nicely around the handy straws.








Poke around inside the paper stocking with your name on it to find a napkin-wrapped set of utensils. That perky little elf? Yours to keep, too!

Look for crisp carrot sticks and home baked cheese pretzel twists tucked inside packs of "Reindeer Food." Doesn't really make any sense, I suppose, but just seemed kind of "Pinterest-y" to label them like that!

Notice the "green fruit juice" in the clear plastic cup pictured above? Ha! Mischievous grandma planted a straw inside of Jello before it set and achieved her goal of fooling the kiddoes into thinking they were drinks!

Mrs. Santa and I rounded out our luncheon spread with appetizer sized plates of mixed fresh fruit paired with wells of creamy dip and smug little turkey meatball Christmas mice bewhiskered with chives, sporting almond slice ears, and bedded in white rice. We offered fool-the-eye cups of bright green mashed potatoes and a side sprinkling of lettuce dotted with tiny sweet tomatoes........


Hey, everybody! How about a round of applause? This kid's been to a cafeteria!

 

But three items remained! And there's a lovely "spirit of Christmas" story behind right below them!

One of my favorite blogs is Hoopla Palooza. As the name implies, it's a refreshingly original site. "Seriously Fun. Seriously!" Lisa creates wonderful food-crafty treasures for each and every holiday, plus plenty of ordinary times in between. I never miss a post. And that proved to be a very good thing for me last month!

Lisa enthusiastically joined an international group of talented and generous baking bloggers in a fund raising auction to benefit victims of the Philippine islands typhoon. I would have bid on anything Lisa contributed to the effort, but lucky for me, her dozen marshmallow snowmen were the cutest prize in the bunch! What a thrill to find out that I'd won and these zany little snow-children were on their way to live with me! Right away, I knew they'd be the stars of Mrs. Santa's Cafeteria at Grandma's Fourth Annual Christmas Cookie Baking Party!.....and of course, they were!

"How about a bite, kids? Just one little teeny, tiny little taste?"
"Naw, we don't think so, grandma! Sorry!"

And finally, you ask, did we ever get to baking our Christmas cookies? Well, yes, actually we did - with apologies for the national shortage of icing and sprinkles we triggered!

Merry Christmas, dear friends, both large and small!

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