This past Sunday our dear friends, Sal and Gary, invited us to Brooklyn for a Sunday lunch and cookie making extravaganza with Gary’s Sicilian-born mom, Maria. For a long time, Maria had been wanting to show me how to make a traditional Sicilian Christmas cookie called cuci dati (“sweet things”) in the Sicilian dialect. She had saved some of the fig marmellata she makes every fall with figs from the trees in her Sicily garden so she could introduce me to the proper recipe. The weather was pretty warm so it made it even stranger to be making Christmas cookies in May, but that is what we did. This is just one photo as a hint to let you know that once winter returns and the holiday season is upon us, I will offer the recipe along with instructional photos. Mean of me to entice, but I wanted to give you something to look forward to.