Cookie Dough

Today I wish to talk about not a new food I've tried, but an old favorite. I, of course, am talking about cookie dough. That's right, cookie dough. Not the baked good, the raw stuff that you can eat with a spoon. Which I do, when I can.

At this very moment, there is a 5 pound tub of chocolate chip cookie dough in my little mini fridge. It's taking up most of the space with its sweet calorie filled goodness. As much as I love cookies, and anyone who knows me can tell you I really love cookies, there is something really wonderful about cookie dough. There's almost a little kid feeling to cookie dough.

For as long as I can remember, my father has been making me chocolate chip cookies. It was almost a ritual to it. He would mix everything together, use the electric mixer, and then when he was done he would give the beaters to my sister and I to consume with much finger licking and joy. There's an art to cleaning off a mixer to it's best potential. You have to twist your tongue in unexpected ways, use your pinkies to get out that last little bite of dough, until you return the beater to the sink, its metal surface already sparklingly clean.

I don't really know what's so comforting about cookie dough. It's sweet, of course, which is always a plus. There's that really wonderful almost crumbly texture to it, the mealy feeling of the sugar that's still in a solid form mixed into flour that is no longer powdery and dry. I try not to think about the raw eggs and the diseases I'm probably flirting with in my obsession. Usually it's not really that hard.

How do you really describe the taste of a chocolate chip cookie? It's like trying to describe what blue is. It simply IS. If you've never had a chocolate chip cookie, how can you understand that warm, sweet mixture of cookie and chocolate? How can you really get that undercurrent of rich warmth, not really sweet but on the edge? How can you truly appreciate the delicious scent that rises out of the oven in response to the small chunks of flour, sugar, eggs, chocolate, milk, and more that sit, smugly baking into something magical?

People say we're American as Apple Pie. I disagree. I think we're American as Chocolate Chip Cookies.