I want a cookie. That’s my battle cry for tonight. I don’t have a cookie and I’m not going into battle to get one but having a battle cry just sounds like a cool thing to have. And I like cookies. Why not? They’re good. Cookies are the one dessert I like over all others. Besides straight up chocolate that is but chocolate is it’s own thing. It’s used in desserts but I don’t consider it a dessert category. Maybe “Chocolates” is a dessert category because calling it by the plural means that you’ve done something fancy with chocolate and made it into something. But the singular is just a food substance.
When I say cookies are my favorite dessert that means I like them better than cake, ice cream, candies, or whatever other sugar filled sweet thing you will offer me. I don’t eat many desserts so cookies are usually the only ones I have. I mostly have fruit as a snack. I always have bananas, apples, and pears around the house. I try to eat right. I know full well that if I have ice cream and cake around the house I’ll eat them. So I don’t buy them. I don’t miss them either because I have no cravings for ice cream or cake. Cookies I have cravings for so that’s what I’ll buy if I want a dessert.
I usually don’t keep cookies in the house. Sometimes I do but not always. I used to always keep cookies in the house but then I ate too many of them. My waistline did not appreciate that as I grew older. And I was never really a big eater so I don’t need them around. I’ll go and get some cookies now and again.
I do keep chocolate around the house all the time. I normally get a bag of Ghiradelli 60% cocoa chips and a bag of Ghiradelli milk chocolate chips. Not only is this the cheapest way to get chocolate, the equivalent amount in a bar is two or three times the price, but it allows me to have small amounts of chocolate. Chocolate isn’t something I think of as a snack but something I want a taste of. If I were to buy a big chocolate bar I would eat the whole thing even if I really wanted a few chips worth of chocolate. My chocolate portion is four chips. That’s all I need to get a taste. If I want more than that I’ll have more, and I often do, but it’s never as much as, say, a whole Snickers bar.
I actually eat less calories when I have chocolate. I’ve found that if I don’t have chocolate around and I want a taste of chocolate I’ll end up eating a lot more calories worth of random stuff because I wasn’t satisfied. It’s weird but chocolate helps me watch what I eat.
So most of the cookies that I really like have chocolate in then. Sure, I enjoy sugar cookies, snicker-doodles, short bread cookies, and the like but I don’t ever buy those ones. I’ll have them if I’m out somewhere and I am offered them but I’ll always go for the cookies with chocolate in them first.
Linden’s chocolate chip cookies are cookies that I like and get every now and then. They are the ones that people around these parts are familiar with from the high school cafeteria. They come three to a pack, are dry and crumbly, and taste real good. I sometimes walk to the local 7-11, which is the only store around here that has them, and buy a couple of packs. If I open a pack I know I’m going to eat all three cookies so I only open one pack a day at most. Gotta maintain cookie discipline.
The other type of cookie I get these days is the store baked kind. Both of our local supermarkets sell them and they come twenty four to a box. I get the chocolate chip cookies or the chocolate cookies. They’re fresh baked and go stale in a few days and this was causing me a problem. Not really a problem but I was eating too many of them in too short a time. I don’t like to have more than two or three cookies a day and that’s not everyday. I found myself eating them when I wasn’t even hungry and I felt like I was in a race against time to eat them all before they went stale. That’s no way to enjoy a cookie or to eat in general.
My solution to this strange little problem was to put the store baked cookies into the freezer. Now when I buy a box of them I stick it into the freezer and take out a couple of cookies to eat during that particular day. I’m no longer in a race with the cookies going stale. That’s good because I have no interest in racing cookies because winning is losing.
I used to get a lot of store bought cookies. The various Keebler and Chips Ahoy varieties but never the regular chocolate chips. The regular Chips Ahoy and such cookies are not very good but the dark chocolate and peanut butter cup varieties are. Those were my cookies of choice years ago because there were lots of flavors and they didn’t go stale in two days. I’ll still get them on rare occasions but, for the most part, I’ve lost my taste for them.
I can remember getting Pepperidge Farm cookies back in college. They were always a favorite and available in the school store. There weren’t a lot of things in that store so they were often my snack of choice. Milanos and Mint Milanos mostly. It wasn’t until I was out of college that Pepperidge Farm came up with my now favorite variety of theirs: Nantucket Cookies. They have big chunks of dark chocolate in them. I can’t remember the last time I had a Pepperidge Farm cookie but they were often my go-to cookie throughout the 1990s. They have always been on the expensive side so I never got them too often but they were always good.
One final cookie that I’ve had lately for the first time in a while is the Chinese cookie. I have no idea why it is called that but it’s a big cookie, about the size of a small plate, that is marbleized light and dark batter with a big dollop of chocolate in the middle. These are really good but must contain about a half a day’s worth of calories. They’re a once in a while cookie. A long while.
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