RANDOM THOUGHTS ON A RANDOM TOPIC #1

I had been meaning to write more in this blog, but partially because I haven't had time and I haven't had any ideas, I've let it sit here. So today, I'm going to write all my thoughts about a given subject.

TOPIC OF THE DAY: Cookies.

Now in order to properly write about any topic, you need to be properly inspired by the thing you're writing about. Inside Herter Hall, where I have my History of Japan course, there's a stand where a guy sells various baked goods and trendy bottled fruit drinks like Odwalla and various incarnations of green tea. $1.20 and one oatmeal raisin and one chocolate chip later, I'm properly inspired. So here goes.

The oatmeal raisin cookie was just as chewy as I like it. There's really no other way. But by the same token, Oatmeal sans raisins must be crunchy. I don't know whythis is true, but it is. I got the oatmeal raisin at the stand because I so rarely find good oatmeal raisin elsewhere.

Chocolate Chip cookies are much more ubiquitous, and there's much less of a chance you'll find sub-par ones. If you think about it, Chocolate Chip cookies are a more American dessert than Apple Pie. Where did Apple Pie come from? Well, "Dutch Apple Pie" is not really Dutch, but a bastardization of "Deutsch" or German. This happened a lot to German things after World War II, due to people's attitudes towards Germans, or so I've read.

Meanwhile, Chocolate Chip Cookies were invented in Whitman, Massachusetts, in 1930. You've probably heard this story before: Ruth Wakefield, wife of the owner of the Toll House Inn, was attempting to make chocolate cookies. She put in bits of semisweet baking chocolate, thinking it would have melted while baking. They didn't. She decided to sell them anyway. The rest is history.

Chips Ahoy! with milk are great. And the supermarket clones of them aren't too far off either. Demoulas/Market Basket Supermarkets, close to where I live, have Chiperiffic brand, which are virtually indistinguishable.

Even better are those tubes of cookie dough; slice em, bake em, and you got oven fresh goodness, just crispy enough to remain solid, and the chips melt on your tongue. It was the only reason I bought a baking sheet, metal flipper, potholders, and some Palmolive one-use dish washing pads last year: so I could buy a tube of cookie dough, walk to the 19th floor kitchenette, and bake a batch that would make me the hero of the hall.

Chocolate Chip cookie dough is also fun to eat raw. Risk of Salmonella? Yeah, but I could also choke. Same thing: the risk is there, and I choose to do it anyway becuase the chances aren't that great.

Another great kind of chocolate chip cookie are the Peggy Lawton brand. 3/8 inch thick, 3 inches across, pack of three for 50 cents. It's a local brand, so don't expect to find them unless you live in or near Massachusetts. Also comes in other standard flavors: oatmeal, chocolate, sugar, and peanut butter.

Which leads me to the issue of nonstandard flavors. Brand name cookies. Oreos are probably the example that spring to everyone's mind when I say "cookies." Consequently, I have a lot to say about Oreos.

Some people prefer to eat the Oreos whole, some twist them open and lick the frosting, I switch off. And sometimes, if I have the Double Stuf variety, I like to take a knife, slice down the middle of the frosting, and have two halves with equal frosting. Try that some time. Don't use a plastic knife. You'll just fuck up your dessert.

Speaking of slicing Oreos down the middle, you could try stacking these cookie halves so you end up with a triple- or quadruple-decker cookie sandwich.

Oreos in 6-packs you find in vending machines are smaller than the ones you find in family-sized packages. Why is that?

Chocolate creme Oreos? We don't need new flavors. The original was chocolatey enough. Please don't go any farther...oops! Peanut butter creme Oreos. That's enough...(still waiting for the next new mutant to come out).

Oreo clones. When I was younger, my folks would buy this Oreo clone called Hydrox, made by some company called Sunbeam. Same company that made Vienna Fingers, like an elngated vanilla oreo. Hydrox were good, but not nearly as good as the real thing. More recently, I've seen that Austin, the company responsible for packaged peanut butter crackers, also has a clone of Oreos, and I have to say they're horrible.

Nilla wafers. ...No comment.

Keebler cookies. E.L.Fudge is the only one that springs to mind and frankly I don't care about anything else they have to offer. Except maybe those chocolate-covered Graham crackers they sell. Those are pretty good.

Devil's Food cake cookies. Word to the wise: Don't bother buying the Snackwells brand. If you're trying to lose weight, you shouldn't bother eating Devil's Food Cake at all. You can't eat just one cookie. I've tried and failed every time except when it was the last cookie in the box.

SCENARIO A: Person is trying to lose weight. Person cheats by eating Devil's Food Cake. Eats 5 cookies.
SCENARIO B: Person is trying to lose weight. Person cheats by eating Snackwell's Devil's Food Cake. Perons thinks "These aren't really that bad for me, they're Snackwells" and eats two 6-packs of cookies.
NET WEIGHT GAIN: Equal in both cases. Probably.

And then we have Girl Scout cookies. They're great, but you gotta buy a lot of em if you want 'em to last the whole year, because those girls only sell them in the late winter/early spring. Way to satisfy all those people who want you to buy a box because their daughter/sister/niece/whatever is selling: buy one box from each. You've laid in a supply for the hotter months ahead, and you've gotten those people to stop bugging you. Perfect.

Thin Mints. You'd think they'd go great with milk. In my experiences, not so much. That chocolate coating keeps the liquid from being absorbed into the cookie. They're better plain anyway.

Then there's the variety called Caramel DeLites, formerly called Samoas. Was this change made to avoid annoying people living in American Samoa? Whatever the case, the combination of caramel, chocolate, and coconut is nice once in a while, but it suffers the same problem as thin mints: can't dunk 'em in milk easily. And you don't want to have em too often. I don't know why but I usually get tired of them really quick.

Moving on to other cookies we find Animal Crackers. I still like these even though they're geared for kids 10-15 years younger than me. I just don't seem to notice which animal I'm biting the head off of any more.

Cookies with M&Ms in them. I don't really like M&Ms, so consequently I'm not fond of these. But it makes me wonder: if people can make sugar cookies with M&Ms, has anyone tried making peanut butter cookies with Reese's Pieces? Get on this, Hershey, you're stitting on a gold mine here. Let those folks at Keebler handle it like they did Rainbow Deluxe cookies. You'll make millions.

Biscotti. They're technically cookies. If you can find the ones dipped in fudge, jackpot. One time I was at a friend's house and hadn't eaten anything all day, so he offered me some chocolate-chip biscotti. I ate all that was left in the box and washed it down with a Diet Coke with Lime. The biscotti were all right, but not something I'd ask for above anything else. I was just starving at the time.

Cookie Crisp cereal. Bringing the concept of Milk & Cookies to breakfast. Personally, I don't wanna see chocolate (or for that matter, fake-"froot" flavors) at breakfast. Unless it's inside a chocolate croissant. So I've never had Cookie Crisp cereal, at least not in the state General Mills recommends (the classic Jerry Seinfeld way: in a bowl with milk). As a semi-off-topic side note, my brother does a pretty good impression of Rush Limbaugh in which Rush is screaming for more Cookie Crisp.

Dunkaroos. For those who haven't heard of them, it was a little package of quarter-sized cookies and a small tub of frosting for dipping. Never bothered to try them, but the commercials were interesting.

Hershey's Cookies 'n' Cream candy bars. Doesn't taste very much like either cookies or cream.

And finally we come to the only inedible cookie on the list. I'm talking about browser cookies. The kind that certain sites say must be enabled to view certain things. Somewhere in that name, there's a Homer Simpson gag waiting to be made. Someone could be talking about computers, probably Lisa, and mention browser cookies, prompting Homer to go "Mmm...cookies."