Icy Christmas Coffee

Icy Christmas Coffee

Ingredients:
6 oz. strong coffee
2 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. Creme de Menthe
1/4 tsp. mint extract
1 scoop vanilla ice cream

Directions:
ice cubes
Combine ice, coffe and sugar in tall glass. Stir to dissolve sugar. Add Creme
de Menthe, mint extract and ice cream. Serve with candy cane hooked over edge of
glass.
© Aliske Webb 1999. Published by Bookmice.com
The Quilt Inn Country Cookbook Aliske Webb
Christmas Carolers’ Chocolate
For each person
Melt 2 oz. semisweet chocolate in top of double boiler, then whisk in 1 cup milk
and heat thoroughly.
Snowballs in the Mud
Prepare hot chocolate as above, and to each mug add 1/4 tsp. mint extract or
1/2 tsp. Creme de Menthe. Float marshmallow snowballs on top and serve with
chocolate mint stick.
© Aliske Webb 1999. Published by Bookmice.com
The Quilt Inn Country Cookbook Aliske Webb
The Quilters
We didn’t have much money growing up. I never really noticed its lack. Every
Summer I went to a cool small town where Grandma lived while my Dad sweated it out
in the city.
When I was five, I thought my Grandma was the only woman in the world who
quilted. She was a magician. I watched her cut scraps of fabric and arrange the multi-
colored shapes like fabric tiles in a giant jigsaw puzzle. She’d let me help sometimes
if I wasn’t too fidgety. Then she would start to sew them all together. Piece by piece.
It took too long so I went out to play.
When I was ten, Grandma took me to the church basement where a dozen of
her friends gathered around a creaky wood frame. I was surprised that Grandma had
taught all these other women to play her colorful game. They sat and quickly stitched
the quilt with fine straight stitches. They let me make iced tea and bring them cookies
and thread their needles until my eyes were too tired and cross-eyed to see. As they
talked and laughed, I went to sleep on a pile of musty smelling pillows. Grandma would
wake me and I’d stumble sleepily home in the dark with her.
When I was fifteen, going with Grandma was more of a duty than anything. It’s
not that I didn’t love her, you know. It was just that I wanted to be out doing other things.
And besides they had this real annoying habit. By then I had my own place at the
quilting frame. They would just get into talking about something really interesting and
juicy, when someone would clear their throat and tilt their head ever-so-slightly in my
direction. Like deft jugglers they would briskly turn the conversation to something else.