Neighborly holidays

Two days ago a box from 1-800-Flowers arrived on the doorstep. It contained this snowman plant:


Isn't that cute? Of course, the snowman head was in a separate compartment in the box, waiting for us to stick in the plant ourselves, and I couldn't bring myself to do it because I didn't want to CRUSH the beautiful plant, so instead we have a plant in a white pot with three candies on one side, and a snowman head lying on our coffee table. But I still love it!

Anyway, it took us forever to find the card (turned out it was taped to the outside of the shipping box, which Torsten had tossed in the corner), but when we did we discovered that it was a little holiday gift from our next-door neighbors. Isn't that nice of them? They are already the nicest ever, doing things like giving us a jump when we accidentally leave our car trunk cracked all night and the interior light kills the battery, and helping Torsten carry our nursery furniture upstairs, and taking care of Montana when we went to the mountains in September, and promising to take care of her again when I go into labor.

They are wonderful, is the point, and nice and thoughtful and generally everything you want in a neighbor. And since they have done so many nice things for us and saved us a ton of money in the process (in dog boarding costs alone), not to mention time and stress, and since it is hard for us to reciprocate because they rarely ask for or seem to need anything, we had decided that an appropriate way to thank them would be to stretch our budget to buy them a modest gift card to a local restaurant, and put it in a holiday card, and bring it to them along with a plate of homemade cookies. So we bought the gift card, and are planning to make the cookies this weekend.

Torsten will be making his traditional German Christmas cookies, which honestly? I do not like. They are dry and crunchy, and I like my cookies soft and chewy. To be fair, Torsten doesn't like my cookies either. I seem to be in the minority on not liking his cookies (they are full of so much butter that it is a WONDER I don't love them), so I have absolutely no qualms handing them out as gifts to others, but I DO want to make at least one thing that's to my own taste to include on the plate, so that if one of the neighbors is ALSO not a fan of crumbly cookies, there will be something on the plate for them too.

So now I am stewing over what, exactly, to make. I was thinking about peanut butter buckeyes, which I made last year, and loved, but since Torsten doesn't like peanut butter and I won't have family in town this year, seems like the perfect thing to make and then give away (I mean, not ALL of them, OBVIOUSLY I would keep some for myself, I mean PIGLET NEEDS PEANUT BUTTER BUCKEYES, but that way I won't eat the whole batch myself). But also, that isn't a cookie. So maybe I should make a cookie too? Like a traditional chocolate chip? Or something more unusual or fancier?

What are your favorite cookie recipes? Extra helpful if they are things that are generally universally liked, since we don't know a whole lot about this family's tastes.

(Also, is it kind of bad that I am a little annoyed that now that this lovely plant has shown up, it will look like we are doing our own holiday gift for them as a reciprocation? I am guessing it would not be so festive if I wrote on the card, "WE PURCHASED THIS GIFT CARD FOR YOU BEFORE YOUR PLANT ARRIVED, SO THERE.")