Shortbread: Courtesy of the Hospitality and Information Service in Washington D.C.

When my mom was 25 she married my dad and they moved away from rural/small city Alberta to Washington-freaking-D.C. to live the life of diplomats.  Now that I am 27 that really puts things in perspective.  At this point my mom had been a diplomat's wife living in Virginia for two years.  Ack.  It's pretty neat, though, that they did that and it was a super interesting time for them to be there.  They stayed in the Watergate hotel when they first moved and were getting settled, and it was RIGHT after the Watergate scandal had broken.  Crazy times.

Anyways, one of the many things that my mom did there was learn how to host a mean cocktail party.  This involved gathering some party tricks and crowd-pleasing appetizers and other good things.  So, she invited Kaeli and I over the other night to pass down her scottish shortbread recipe, and to tell us the story of where the recipe came from.  It was a cute night.  And the shortbread was delicious.  I'm not going to post the recipe but some of the pics are worth sharing for sure.

This shortbread started with me purchasing glace cherries, which I have never liked because they remind me of fruitcake.  But Joel loves them.  He figured out long ago that my mom always has some in the door of the freezer and whenever he used to come over he would go find them and sneak a few.  I ratted him out, but only because I knew my mom would think it was funny and would like the fact that he felt comfortable enough to help himself.  I like that too.  Anyways, he's eaten them all so I had to buy some new ones and bring them over.

I also brought some Christmas coloured smarties thinking we could use them to make the little holly berries instead of the glace cherries, but we ate them all before we even started baking.  Who was I kidding, I knew we would not have any left to decorate with. Pshaw.

Here is my mom kneading expertly, as she tends to do.

And here I am crammed up in my favourite spot on the kitchen counter. For some reason Kaeli and I like to cram ourselves between that pull-out cutting board and the cupboard.  Always have, always will. 

Mandatory lay-on-the-floor break.

And while I did that the shortbread magically got finished!  Okay, so I don't have pics of cutting them out or doing the glace cherries.  My mom did all the cute little holly berry cherries.

But it turns out, after all these years, I finally decided that I like the darn cherries.  But only baked on to tasty shortbread.

And finally, a sweet photo by dad.