Quiet news day at Scroobious Corner
Summary of today's emails between Vivaldifan and I:
"BORED."
"..." (He is actually quite busy, apparently.)
"STILL BORED."
"..."
"BORED AND STRESSED."
"[yawn]"
"NEED COOKIE. SEND COOKIE."
"When is a cookie a cookie, and not a biscuit and not a brownie? Go blog." [Translation: make your own entertainment, woman, and let me publish this here newspaper.]
Which is why we will now broach the Great Cookie Debate.
It is commonly believed that cookie is merely Merkin for biscuit. While this theory has its roots in truth and is appealingly simple, I maintain that this is not so. A biscuit, you see, is a dainty thing that can sit neatly alongside a teacup without completely overbalancing the saucer and causing slooshy mess. It is also light, crunchy, and possibly iced. It may contain raisins (though most do not), but is generally of a smooth consistency.
But a cookie, now, a cookie. A cookie is a great big childish messy thing. It is never a neat circle; it has oozed joyously in the oven. It is full of chocolate chunks, or raisins, or similar textural goodness. It is possible (though, obviously, fundamentally wrong) to get a small cookie, but a cookie baked in the true spirit of cookieness should be bigger than your palm. Preferably much bigger. The mere thought of eating more than one should cause a happy blend of fear and excitement to roost in one's belly. And it is chewy. It tastes of grandmotherly ovens and Saturday afternoons. (Not Sunday. Biscuits taste of Sunday tea with your other grandmother, the ladylike one, the one who tells you that blue and green should never be seen, and who serves tea with biscuits from a tin.)
Brownies are not cookies. Brownies are just dense, chocolatey cake. I have to admit I don't quite understand brownies. And what do you call those divine chocolatey-fudgey things with huge chunks of biscuit in them? They deserve a proper name. Like, say, "manna". Or "mine".
There you have it. I hope that's cleared a few things up.
Now I want a cookie even more. Also a grandmother.
8 comments:
Biscuit? Dainty? Not the North American variety.
I suppose we've appropriated and misapplied an otherwise perfectly good word. Again.
Ooh! Those look good. Thanks for clearing that up, Jam, I've frequently heard (but had temporarily forgotten) about "biscuits and gravy" etc and never quite figured out how that could work.
Now I want a biscuit.
(And yes, you Merkins do weird, weird things to language.)
ppldebyg: these peculiar kosher kibble things I'm now eating in lieu of cookies. Odd, but tasty.
Yep. Ditto. Am thinking of adding a day of cookies to my ice cream diet...the good chocolatey ones.
And brownies and ice cream is my favorite dessert. Hands down. I think brownies were invented only to provide ice cream witha partner.
Hey, no fair! I haven't had breakfast yet, was looking forward to my porridge with sliced banana... until you started on about the biscuits and the cookies and the brownies and the icecream...
szenuhczt: obscure German dialect, roughly translated: 'the experience of severe cookie envy'.
Yes, I think of the north american biscuit when I hear the word. But I do like your definition of cookie.
Brownies, I can do without those. I'm not a big fan.
ggyvcx: A prescription medicine you can take to help an unhealthy dependence on sugary snacks.
Brownies and ice cream. Mmmmmm. Prowl, was that wordver deliberately so close to the actual German word Sehnsucht (meaning longing)? Wonderfully apt.
Ah. "Merkin" - not the name of some UK-based cookie company.
*shakes head at sloooow uptake*
Heh. "Merkin" is in fact a nicely* ambiguous and non-Southerner-exclusive term. Do I need to explain the double entendre or are you all caught up?
* In the exact sense of the term.
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