Thursday, September 20, 2007

The Moralizing Brownie, or, The Dessert of Repentance

Happy Yom Kippur!  No, that came out wrong, but then again, wrong seems about right for tonight.  I’m skipping services – work demands my participation in a field visit tomorrow and Kel is out of town on a girls’ spree in the Windy Apple.  I’ve been so freaking busy lately that I’ve barely been able to keep myself hydrated, much less update Mr. Blog here in any meaningful way.  However, given that this is a day of fasting for those who are observing it, and that my last post referenced weirdo jewcookies of my own creation, maybe it’s a good time for me to tell you about the other cookies – not made by me, nor even consciously selected for my larder – cookies that have taught me an important lesson about desire and restraint.  I therefore hereby share with you as follows:

I knew when I ordered them that I’d be doubly glad when they came, because by then I’d have completely forgotten about them – and of course I was proven triumphantly correct.  For truly, what greater thrill, what more sublime joy, what deeper profundity of pleasure, is there than that which arises with the words, “Dude, your Girl Scout cookies have arrived”? 

It’s not that they’re the best cookies in the whole world, though they are undeniably very good in their way.  It’s more like they’re archetypes of various platonically ideal cookies.  Their Thin Mint is the thin mint; their Samoa is the samoa – and don’t give me any lip about nobody else having a samoa in the competition, and the same for Tagalongs too.  These are classic cookies and I salivate just at the thought of my very own annual stack of brightly colored cardboard boxes, each with its heartwarming cover-photo of girls getting all scouty and healthy and confident.  Pure buttery goodness, packed into convenient plastic trays and delivered to my door by a friend with some kind of tangential relationship to a Girl Scout somewhere.  Anyway, once a year I’m asked if I want cookies, and I always do, knowing as I place the order that I’ll have forgotten about them entirely by the time they arrive.  That’s part of their special sweetness – they come as a windfall, and the cookie you do not anticipate is the most scrumptious cookie of them all. 

Or so I thought, until this year’s delivery caught me by its anticipated, lipsmacking surprise.  O frabjous day, the cookies have arrived!  My Thin Mints!  My Samoas!  My – what the hell is this?  Did I order an additional box beyond the two I always get (TMs and Samoas being the indispensable duo in my persnickety opinion)?  Sometimes I will throw in a third box on top for variety – a Do-Si-Do or some Tagalongs, you know, for giggles.  And since I’ve bought and paid for them untold months ago, they’re effectively free!  Free mystery cookies!  The bounty of nature’s abundance indeed exceeds even itself!

So which extra goodie did I get this time, I ask myself?  The dark green color of the box reveals nothing on its own.  I pluck it from the stack for a closer look:

Brownies!  Yay!  Wait – what?  Oh.  Sugar-free brownies. 

Hm.

Can these actually be any good?  I didn’t actually order these, did I?  I mean, I’d never have gotten them on my own behalf, I don’t think.  They’ve even got high cholesterol, just with aspartame instead of authentically sweet, sweet sweetness.  Inefficiently individually wrapped in clear plastic envelopes, several dozen more-than-a-mouthful chunks of ostensible chocolately goodness huddle at the bottom of the box. 

But come on, they’re from the Girl Scouts!  The chicks who brought me these Thin Mints and Samoas!  I gotta love’em!  Right?  Right?

Or will they suck?

I pluck a brownie in its hermetic wrapper from the box and open it, expecting a rich chocolate-butter aroma – but there is not even a whiff of cookiesmell.  My finger explores its surfaces, hoping to find the moistness that distinguishes the richest, most delicious brownies – but my groping leads only to disappointment, as the briquette is as dry as sand.  Signs bode poorly but still I soldier forward to administer the ultimate test: I pop a dry, odorless, sugar-free Girl Scout brownie into my mouth, and I masticate. 

The adobe cakelet shatters into chunks that evenly disperse with Brownian motion to every hidden corner of my mouth, where they absorb every molecule of water in my whole damn head.  I taste no chocolate.  I taste, at best, cardboard – and not even very good cardboard at that. I’m beginning to choke on pulverized muffinrubble; I need a big swig of something to extract even a scintilla of flavor out of this apparent anti-dessert.  Once I do eventually taste it, though, I can see why the flavor hid – it’s an anemic, ersatz flavor, uninspiring and bland, with an aglucogenic bitterness on the back end.  It’s hardly worth the effort to chew it. 

What a disappointment - Girl Scout brownies that are basically inedible!  I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but it’s hard to argue with an astringent mouthful of arid powder.  So I get me a slakedraught of tapwater, force the mealy dessicake down my throat, and try to move forward and put all the ugliness behind me. 

The next day, struggling with disbelief, I assay another SFGSB.  Again I’m immediately forced to question whether it even qualifies as a food product, or is better categorized as construction material. Consuming it takes so much work and gives so little satisfaction that a simple cost-benefit analysis dictates my course of action: after only a few chews I spit what’s left of the purported brownie into the sink (where it produces a particularly unsightly mess) and dump the remaining contents of the box right into a garbage bin.  I don’t want to risk the amnesia of desperation, that I might mistakenly sample sub-par baked goods yet again at some point in my potentially munch-addled future.  Then I break down the box itself and add it to our recycling pile, removing any trace of its taint from our household. 

These are not acts I undertake with an easy mind, but I feel compelled.  I love the planet and I hate waste.  However, when somebody screws up a brownie like these ones got screwed up, it really justifies my violation of my green ethic.  I’ll throw away food when it’s this bad, and I don’t care how many Girl Scouts – or even Brownies – I’m insulting when I do it.  Some things can’t be left to linger.  For god’s sake, there are children at risk here. 

MORAL: A bad free cookie is still bad.