The Joy of Cookies

Tears of joy welled up in my eyes when I put my hands into the dough. Turning off the hand mixer (whose rhythmic humming had me giddy to begin with), I stuck my hands in, partially to push the dough down the sides but mostly to become a part of the mixture, an ecstatic symphony of touch, sight, smell and presumed taste. Raspberry squares were on the way.

This sort of fanatical experience may not be within the immediate reach of everyone; home cooking is generally appreciated and the best food can be appreciated by the masses, but I plead guilty to a kind of food obsession that make raspberry squares only the idle munching that accompanies true plans for greatness: a casual lunch of spinachball appetizers, turkey scallopine with mushrooms in a marsala sauce, roasted eggplant, wild rice, a good white wine and a suitably square, suitably raspberry dessert choice.

My food snobbery has its downside too: a food snob finds it aggravating, if not nauseating, to have to force down mediocre fare, and the sight of the truly bad leads one to consider skipping the meal. My experience from the dining halls is a little removed at the moment, as I am spending this year abroad, but I know reaching into the freezer for dinner here in the apartment is the sign of defeat even before calculating the fat and salt numbers. And so I indulge my obsession: bringing home expensive bottles of balsamic vinegar and olive oil, searching around for pure vanilla, buying pine nuts and an array of spatulas my roommate can't tell apart.

Though I don't mind the need for a richly garlicked salad dressing and the absolute necessity of basil in something every two weeks or so, I am not sure I have much choice. My food snobbery is clearly genetic. Whether it's nature or nurture is a moot point when I instinctively turn my nose up at the concept that any sort of chain--McDonald's, The Cheesecake Factory, Chili's, whatever--can get more than French fries right.

At least the condition has an obvious solution close to its source: with my own apartment, equipped with the recipes that made me this way, I recreate a semblance of the good old foods. It is a mere shadow on the wall of the true table, however; I am just a beginner.

In the dorms, which do not provide us with kitchens (and you thought cable was what made the DeWolfe types happy), feeding, quite literally, this sort of condition can be a difficult task. We can't quite e-mail dinners you can taste yet. But let us take a moment to praise the merits of the cookie.

Don't tell the post office, but cookies travel pretty darn well, even third class. Wrapped in wax paper and fresh from the freezer to the mail counter, quality morsels can travel sea to shining sea without too much damage to their taste. (There can be a pulverizing effect, however, so I recommend a sturdy shoebox.) Only your smile might give away the nature of the treasured contents when you go to claim them. And so the remedy to college food ho-hums may be closer then the next family holiday meal: prepare to enjoy the taste of home on your very own futon.

And have no qualms about being a little rude with your cookies. My blocking group would attest that I am a nice enough guy, but taking a walnut crescent is a serious offense. Sure, the chocolate ones were for them (it must be a genetic defect, I know, but not everyone likes the dark stuff), but a misplaced finger on a raspberry square would be grounds for a hearing with the Ad Board in my book. And not a meeting over lunch either.

At first it may be hard for friends to understand how the cookie becomes more than a mere reality. Talking about the cookie, fretting over its maintenance, spending idle moments deciding if an acquaintance is worthy of receiving a cookie: all these things are natural. Bringing over cookies is the sign of utmost respect and sincere wishes for someone to feel better, to celebrate their birthday or to recover from wisdom-tooth surgery that makes cookie consumption impossible. From there, one builds an appreciation to the point where the sight alone of the cookie in the box--an island of sweetness and familiarity in the harsh, inedible world--is enough to drive one to finish a paper. That is beginning to understand the essence of the cookie, the majestic raspberry square.

From a totally different angle, however, to have your hands squishing happily in the dough also can't be beat. One can hardly finish lining the pan and criss-crossing the top of the raspberry jam in time to fulfill the basic human need to lick the beaters. And cooking engages me on a intellectual as well as emotional level: that rapid stirring can turn a bunch of powders and some well-placed margarine into the stuff of life (in its fully evolved forms of croissants, cookies and delicate pie crusts) seems nothing less than a miracle. Kneading and a little yeast outdo the best philosophy papers at bringing the abstract to life.

And here, beyond the reach of postal cookies (one never can trust customs inspectors with cookies anyway), it is nice to know a little flour, a few nuts and the essential raspberry jam can bring a taste of home to a bachelor pad halfway across the world. And I get to lick the bowl too. Adam I. Arenson '00-'01, a Crimson editor, is spending the year in Jerusalem.