The Cookie Monster

I am a big fan of the cookie. I consume more than my fair share every week (an amount I might consider disclosing here if I did not think you would be disgusted.....or rather that I would be disgusted and attempt, unsuccessfully, to remedy my sweet-toothed ways). I'm not incredibly picky about cookies but I obviously have my favorites. And I have to admit, as it is season to admit, amidst that top tier is the lovely, purple-adorning, coconut-coated, Samoa from our friends, the Girl Scouts.

Let me let you in on a little known secret about the rest of the Girl Scout Cookies. They're not that good. Oh, I dare say some can hold on to a fight but, on the whole, there's nothing to talk about. Perhaps (I say perhaps because I haven't done the proper research and instead invite you to do my homework) the most popular of the Girl Scout Cookie Flavors is the Thin Mint--the green box, thin, chocolate coated, mint-flavored wafer-like cookies that are a great size for whole-cookie-mouth-popping. But, let's be honest here. Anyone who appreciates the stellar combination of mint with chocolate will run over the Thin Mint box to get to a box of the York cookies. Hellllo!! They're infinitely more minty and infinitely more chocolatey and infinitely more mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. And yet, each year, at that certain time, we flock to our neighborhood Wal-Mart or Target or ........ to get a box of this and a box of that from the somewhat oddly dressed little girls with overpriced goodies. We're more than willing! We're eager. We look forward to it!

((Quick anecdote: this year, my mother was in charge of ordering the cookies. We are a Samoa family. We don't mess around. We want lots and lots of purple, a couple green, a couple red, and who cares what else? But something went wrong with our order (yes, we are pre-orderers). Instead of having lots and lots of purple, we ended up with lots and lots of orange (orange?) and only one purple. It was a travesty! We timed our grocery store runs hoping to hit little Girl Scouts on our way out of the store for their supply of purples.))

It's marketing genius! You always want what you cannot have. And so much of the year, you CANNOT have these cookies. In their paucity....increase craving, increase craving, increase craving.....then supply and increase crazy! Go bezerk! Eat them all! And, remember, they're not very good. If Girl Scout cookies were on the market year round, most of them would never survive (I say most in respect for the Samoa). There are much better cookies in the grocery store aisle. Need I say SoftBatch?? Plus the potential for homemade cookies. Ooooooooooh. But we want the Girl Scout cookies because those cute, little girls have gotten into our minds, and messed with our desires, and manipulated our taste buds so that come the annual release, we stampede them like a massive group of Girl-Scout-cookie-deprived Americans.

Yikes.