Deeds: My son, the moon, and the stars

 It's not Ramadan in our home without moon and star cookies; we've been making them for years, for friends, for Eid, for school presentations.  Decorating is always the best part - heaps of green and white icing and colorful sprinkles strewn everywhere. Except one year, a friend of ours, a master embroiderer from India, was visiting during Ramadan. That year, our cookies looked exquisite! Asif bhai edged each cookie placing one sprinkle at a time creating the most precise designs with the exactness ... well, of a master embroiderer!Here's our post from our first year's blog, 30 deeds: making moon and star cookies for everyone under the sun!Making moon and star cookies during Ramadan has become a tradition my kids and I look forward to each year. We started several years ago, when we finally found a moon-shaped cookie cutter — not an easy task, we spotted ours at a local hardware store. We’ve tried several recipes, but our favorite is one my cousin Saima found on allrecipes.com, called ‘best rolled sugar cookies’. We make them by the hundreds — to share with classmates, teachers, neighbors, bus drivers, tennis teams, friends, family, and anyone else who might want one! The kids decorate each one with green sugar, white sprinkles, and a little bit of icing to make it all stick.Zayd always loves to make packets of cookies to share with his classmates, after our traditional Ramadan presentation in his class. This year, school starts on the last day of Ramadan. No doubt we’ll be baking Eid cookies that afternoon! Tomorrow, he’ll take a batch of moon and star cookies to our neighbors. I’m sure he’ll be on his bike, as he often is every afternoon. He’s our ‘neighborhood watch’ – stopping to say hello to anyone mowing the lawn or collecting the mail, always stopping to play with sweet Surriya, and keeping an eye on what cars are to-ing and fro-ing down our quiet cul-de-sac. We’ll share some cookies with the landscaping crew and take some to our iftar potluck, and then make another big batch for family arriving this weekend.