The Christmas Cookies are saved...maybe

The run up to Christmas has been exhausting, as expected.

The majority of the shopping has been done online and I'm only waiting for two packages.  One that is no big deal if it doesn't get here in time and one that should be delivered to the my sweet mother in law tomorrow.

All of the wrapping has been done.  As I was ready to start my Christmas baking last week, we discovered that the oven had died.  Again.

For those of you keeping count - the oven first died in October.  Only to be resurrected.  The water heater failed in November and now here we are in December and the oven was out again.

We've hit the magic number three of the "bad things happen in threes" saying.  Let's hope we are done for a while.

I went back and forth with the warranty company and have come to the conclusion that if something is an "emergency" we need to just deal with it and then see what can be done with the warranty company (which would probably be as useless as trying to get them to acknowledge an "emergency").

I have a feeling we will soon be parting ways with this company - particularly after being told that THEY could offer emergency service but they couldn't guarantee their vendors would offer emergency service...which is when I cut off the communication; because that was ridiculous and inane.

I could have probably dealt with the loss of the oven over Christmas if I hadn't just spent Thanksgiving sans hot water.  But because I HAD dealt with Thanksgiving without hot water, there was NO WAY I was going to deal with Christmas without an oven.

Here's the deal though - I had been hearing rumblings online about appliances being in short supply.  A rumor, I assumed.  So The Husband and I began searching for an oven.  Guess what we discovered?

Yup, appliances were in short supply.  But we persisted and eventually, The Husband located ONE oven that was available for immediate pick up.  Without his usual dithering over such things, he ordered it immediately.

I refused to believe we had secured it until it showed up, in working order, in our kitchen.  

On Saturday, while I was at work, The Husband and our neighbor picked it up, wrestled it into the kitchen and set it up.

So, the Christmas cookies were saved!

Until this afternoon...I spent the majority of the afternoon prepping the batter for the chocolate chip cookies and was very satisfied.  Until I pulled the first batch out.  They were flat.  Tasty but flat and unappealing.  The only thing I can think is that I must have forgot to put the baking soda in.  Needless to say, I was frustrated.  

I think the reason I forgot the baking soda was because I was trying a new technique.  I was using a tried and true recipe that NEVER lets me down.  But  I kept hearing about how much more accurate weighing ingredients are versus measuring so I decided to give it a shot.

Long story short, I literally spent WAY more time mixing the batter than I usually do AND I forgot a very important ingredient.  

I will try again tomorrow - maybe skipping the weighing in favor of measuring.  I think now is NOT the time to be trying a new technique.  

At any rate, the Christmas shopping and wrapping is done.  We have a new oven and the cookies will be made...eventually.