Christmas Cookies

by sg-1fanintn

This story was written for the Sam/Jack Ship Family's Secret Santa 2010 exchange on Gateworld. It was written for the lovely and talented Nadine (DutchIndeed), whose art work and sense of humor delight us all. Thanks to RepliCartertje for organizing the celebration again, and I'm sorry the flu made this story late. At least, I got it done by Shipmas. Love you all!

Sam opened her eyes to see snow falling peacefully outside the window of the Georgetown brownstone. She had been home exactly three days, and she finally felt rested. Of course, that hadn't stopped her from taking a nap right after lunch! She chuckled to herself and yawned, closing the book that had been resting on her lap when she dozed off. Stretching to shake off the sleepiness, she rose from the couch and made her way to the window to get a better look.

It must have been snowing for some time, although it hadn't even been raining when she fell asleep. She watched as big, fat, heavy flakes fell outside. They had already coated the shrubs, small lawn and street beyond in white. The snow was accumulating quickly, and Sam felt a small wave of joy at the thought. There was nothing better than snow at Christmas, especially when her plans consisted of being curled up next to the fire with her husband.

However, the snow reminded her that there were things she wanted to do. Since arriving home, she had done nothing toward holiday preparations. True to his word, Jack had already put up the Christmas tree before she arrived to preserve time for, as he put it, "other happy activities." Indeed, she smirked! They had spent practically all of the first two days in bed, making up for the time lost while she was away at work. She blushed at the thought of how self-indulgent they had been…although that time together had been a wonderful and exhilarating welcome home. But today, some matter of importance had required that Jack put in an appearance at the Pentagon, and she had been left to her own devices.

Making her way into the kitchen, Sam pulled open the door to the pantry and marveled at how well stocked it was. Jack's housekeeper took good care of the general, she mused. Pulling flour and sugar off the shelves, she decided to bake some cookies.

Sam didn't cook much, but years of making holiday sugar cookies with her mother had forever seared the recipe into her memory. She thought of it like a scientific formula…combine the ingredients by the directions, and the experiment would always produce successful results.

A short time later, with the dough chilling in the refrigerator, she decided she needed some seasonal music. Tuning the radio to the all-Christmas station, she hummed a familiar holiday tune as she made certain she had all the ingredients on hand for icing. Finding that the housekeeper had bought all of those too, she set them aside for later, and decided her next task was to find her cookie cutters.

The first time she came to visit Jack here, he had no tools in his kitchen except basic silverware and a pizza cutter. She grinned, remembering his feigned indignation at her suggestion that he needed a few more accessories. As her visits became more frequent, and after they married, more of her things found their way here. Now that this was their primary residence, she had moved almost everything here, and the place finally felt like home.

Rummaging in the designated "kitchen accessories" drawer, she finally found what she was looking for—the snowflake shaped cookie cutters that had been her mother's. She smiled as she examined them for the first time since the previous Christmas—three distinctly different snowflakes. They were the one consistent memory from every childhood Christmas she could remember. No matter where her father had been stationed, no matter what the climate was like, she and her mother had always baked sugar cookies by the same recipe each year. Even if there was no snow where they were living at the time, the Carters always had snowflake sugar cookies with hard icing at the holidays. And as long as the cookies were there, it felt like Christmas at home to her.

The year her mother died was the only one Sam could remember not making the familiar cookies. That year, the cookie cutters had stayed tucked away. Just the thought of reliving the familiar ritual had been too painful that year. But by the next, she was ready to resume the tradition…although by then, she was baking the cookies alone. Now, she was able to share them with Jack, whose sweet tooth hadn't been able to resist them.

"Carter!" he had exclaimed, as he tried one for the first time, "You made these?"

"Don't be so surprised, Jack. I do have a few domestic skills."

"Oh, I wasn't implying…'

"Yes, you were."

He had grinned and shrugged his shoulders. "Yeah, sorta. But these are great!"

"Glad you like 'em."

"So…you just found this recipe and decided to astound me with them?"

"No, my mother and I used to make these when I was a little girl."

"Well, they're great. New O'Neill tradition." He had grabbed another cookie before retreating to the ball game on the TV in the next room.

Now, once again holding the familiar metal cookie cutters in her hands, she felt the reassuring shapes of the hard, curving, painted wooden handles between her fingers. Some of the paint was gone from those handles, from years and years of repeated use. As she reacquainted herself with their feel, Sam wondered to herself how long her mother had used them before she was old enough to remember. Had they come from a bakery? A grocery store? A military PX? Perhaps they had belonged to her grandmother or an aunt. A pang of sadness struck her as she realized she would never know the answer, because there was no one left to ask. Her mother and father were both gone, and Mark certainly wouldn't remember. But it didn't matter, she told herself. What mattered was that she still had them, and that she used them. They were one of the few constants in her life, something so inherently familiar that just touching them was comforting to her.

Almost regretfully, she set the trio of cookie cutters on the counter near where she planned to roll out the dough, and busied herself with straightening up the odds and ends left over from her dough-making. Once the counters were free of flour and sugar residue, she turned her attention to finding bowls the right size to make the icing…a larger one for the icy aqua-colored icing…and a slightly smaller one for the white icing that she would use for the line work. Then, she set the oven to the right temperature so it could preheat.

As she worked, Sam's attention kept returning to the cookie cutters, and each time she looked at them, she felt a little more of the Christmas spirit enter her heart. Checking her watch, she saw that the dough had been chilling for an hour. Removing it from the refrigerator, she pinched off a fist full. Placing the rest back in the fridge, she sprinkled some fresh flour on the granite countertops and put the dough in the middle. Pulling a rolling pin from a nearby drawer, she started rolling the ball of dough out into a sheet that was even and thin enough that she could cut the cookies from it. When she had rolled it to the proper thickness, she picked up one of the cookie cutters and began to cut out her precious snowflakes, gently moving each newly-cut shape to a waiting cookie sheet.

Sam kept repeating the process until all the dough was gone, and she had racks and racks of golden, cooling cookies around her. She then turned her attention to the icing ingredients she had set aside, quickly mixing the confectioners' sugar, milk, corn syrup and vanilla extract into a sugary concoction. She poured a portion of the icing into the second bowl to reserve for the line work and, reaching for the food coloring, she put two drops of blue and a tiny bit of yellow into the first mix. As she stirred in the color, she was pleased to see the familiar cool, aqua hue form. When the color was even, she set about icing her cookies…starting with the coolest ones first. And by the time she got to the last ones she had baked, they were cool too. Setting the bowl of blue icing aside, she made a cone from waxed paper and filled it with part of the white concoction. Then, she set to work on outlining the cookies. She was amazed that the skill stayed with her year to year. Once mastered, like riding a bike, it never seemed to go away. She put the finishing touches on each cookie by adding accent dots at the points. She had just finished the last one when she heard a key in the door, and the familiar footsteps of Jack O'Neill entering the brownstone.

"Hello?" he called out.

"In the kitchen," she replied.

"That works," he said, "because I brought dinner, and you're never gonna believe…"

He stopped short as he entered the room, where every counter surface was covered with cookies iced in aqua and white.

"Wow!" he exclaimed. "I thought you were gonna take it easy."

"I did," she said, smiling as she picked up a cookie and offered it to him. "What's for dinner?"

"Chinese take out," he mumbled between bites. "But I think we'll skip the fortune cookies. Uhhhhmmmm! These are great. I knew there was a reason I married you."

"Yes, but it wasn't these…because you didn't find out I could make them until after we were married."

He grinned as he wiped the crumbs from the corners of his mouth. "Got me there," he grinned. Setting the bag of takeout on the kitchen table (the only bare surface in the room!), he turned and took his wife in his arms. "Why don't you let me escort you to the table and serve you dinner?"

"Well, I guess I can get a plate and a drink myself, Jack."

He gently pushed her toward the table and into the chair he pulled out. "Oh, no. You've done your part for today. You made The Cookies. I'll get dinner, and when we're done…I'll help you put The Cookies away."

She grinned and leaned back in the chair as Jack bustled around the kitchen. Being here with him like this filled her with the same warmth that the familiar cookie cutters had. He was happy. They were happy…she was home, and it was almost Christmas. Her life was often filled with uncertainty and frustration, but since she and Jack had found their way to each other, her time with him had become precious, and these respites from duty had become the dearest thing she possessed. Sam looked around her kitchen at the sea of snowflake cookies and the smiling man placing a plate, napkin, silverware and a drink in front of her. With a smile, a sigh and a full heart, Sam opened up the sweet and sour pork.

The End