COLOSSAL COOKIE CONTEST: ONE WEEK REMAINS FOR COOKIE CONTEST

Forty-three days and counting.

That's the magic number until Christmas arrives.

The stores are already brimming with Christmas decorations and presents, and thoughts are turning to finalizing busy holiday schedules.

Cookies go hand-in-hand with the busy holidays.

For some families, baking cookies are an integral part of the holiday tradition. Many bake cookies for one-of-a-kind Christmas gifts. Still others create cookie decorations each holiday season.

More than 50 cookies recipes have already been received for the Southeast Missourian's Colossal Cookie Contest. But there's plenty of time for the numbers to grow.

One week remains to enter your favorite cookie recipe in this year's contest. The deadline is Nov. 19.

As many recipes as possible will be published in a keepsake edition of the newspaper Dec. 3, in plenty of time for holiday baking.

Ten semi-finalists will be asked to bake up two dozen of their best Christmas cookies and bring them to the Southeast Missourian Monday, Nov. 24 for a taste test by a community panel of cookie and cooking experts.

The winner will receive a 26-week subscription to the Southeast Missourian -- a $76.25 value. Second place will receive a 13-week subscription, a $38.50 value, and a comic strip umbrella. Third place will receive a comic strip umbrella.

The remaining seven semifinalists will receive a Jean Bell Mosley "Seeds on the Wind" hardcover book.

All finalists will be photographed and interviewed about their cookie capers. All recipes will also appear on the Southeast Missourian's web site, www.semissourian.com, in the Cyberkitchen. These family favorites join about 200 chocolate recipes and about 50 meatloaf recipes already on the web site. Recipes are searchable by ingredient, baker, town, etc.

For more information, contact Joni Adams or Peggy Scott at 335-6611.