The kitchen is the hub of so many family activities leading up to Christmas in the Schwartz family home in Iowa. Every morning the home would fill with the smell of bacon along with pancakes, waffles, or eggs. Large roasts would bake for hours in the oven for dinner. I have no doubt that I gained a few pounds this holiday season. I imagine that any extra weight helps to keep warm as temperatures plummet. It did snow while we were there, but it was only a dusting of less than an inch.
The cookie batter was mixed in the electric mixer in the foreground and at this stage there were many cooks in the kitchen. I couldn’t catch them all as they crowded around the mixer and then dispersed. Ron was the most focused remaining consistently in the corner of the kitchen mixing pizza crust by hand in a small yellow bowl. I also caught Destiny. I believe she was placing the balls of batter on cooking sheets as I sketched her.
Pam and her mom were also in the mix, but they moved off before I could catch them in the sketch. Plans were made for the Christmas day dinner well ahead of time. The cookies were a fluffy crunchy peanut concoction with marshmallows inside. They tasted amazing. The Tupperware they were stored in didn’t snap together very well, so we had to eat them before they went stale. We ate them for days.
You really have done an amazing job at catching the family dynamics. As Sue's sister, looking at these sketches really bring back memories for me.