Nibble Nibble, Part III: Housing Collapse

So this is the finished house, pristine, gracing the dining table for exactly a couple of hours. Within minutes of its completion, the makers began to withdraw their profits, as evidenced by the erosion of the far front corner of the roof, broken ridgepole and missing gumdrops.

After several days, this is the sorry condition of the gingerbread house. Everyone has been pilfering edges, corners, decorations, and last night Daughter and Friend abandoned all pretense of decorum and broke it apart into a pile of cookie pieces. The pieces now live in the cookie jar from the gift basket I won in the library's raffle, but I don't expect them to last much longer..

As we continue to nibble, we remember the fun we had baking and building the little house, and the glow of Christmas cheer warms us all anew. I know I would cheerfully do it all again next year!

(The recipe I use was originally published in the Honolulu Advertiser on December 17, 1970, page G1. The featured baker was Christl Chun, of Manoa.)