Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Cookie dough ain't just for dumped, weepy chicks anymore

Ordinarily, the Fancy Pants dining room table is chock full of goodies after Purim. Israeli chocolates, unidentifiable candies, and hamentaschen of all levels of quality.

Most of this is thorough unimpressive to me. I 'm not a big dessert or snack person. What I like, I love, but if it's not in that narrow category, I can do without.

So imagine my shock and glee when I open up one of the bags...and therein lay a small plastic container of chocolate chip cookie dough. Not unnecessarily roasted, not surrounded by superfluous vanilla ice cream, just straight up dough, in a cup. The only improvement would have been if it had come in a cone, like the aforementioned iced cream, or like ground meats should be.

I'll explain: I believe the overheating of food into some sort of crispy or chewy new food is a surrender to convention, and a waste of precious time and fossil fuels. Steak tartare, sushi, dough of any kind - these are my basic food groups. I was raised to chase my roast beef down and pin it to my plate before I was able to eat it, because it was still screaming for help. I was raised to mock those who fretted about uncooked meats and eggs, to wonder what it is an oven was for other than storing dishes.

I spent months eating brownie batter - it's even my favorite ice cream. My favorite dessert? Chocolate pie, which is not cooked at all but refrigerated, raw eggs notwithstanding. Second favorite? Wife's mundels, which aren't double-baked like mundel bread. They're not even fully single-baked. The official term is NFC - Not Fully Cooked. Baked just long enough for the chocolate chips to get all gooey and melty.

If you mention nuts or fruit, you can get up and walk away.

There's a new standard for shalach manos. Take your tiny liquor bottles, your whimsical and poorly-structured Purim poems, your fresh-baked whatsnot. Just give me some flour, some raw eggs, some sugar, some vanilla, and mush it up and shove it under my door.

For those of you who bake your own fortune cookies, or send entire meals (spaghetti, anyone?), you're in a nutty class all by yourselves. But you know what would really put you over the top? Some challah dough in a single-serving tupperware. You'd have my undying gratitude.

What did WE send, you ask? Did we go all out, and craft some clever package neatly wrapped and zanily captioned? No, because the Fancy Pants are fancy, but we are also quite lazy. So no food for anyone. Sorry. Maybe if more of you provided some raw stuff, we'd be more inclined to return the favor.

And don't come with that "raw vegetable" crap. That would result in obnoxious retribution of a completely immature nature. So save yourself some time and aggravation, and give us a box of cake mix, a couple of eggs, and some oil, and get out of our way.

Oh, in case you were curious, Child was James Bond.

2 comments:

Ali said...

i am confused. like, seriously confused. someone sent you raw cookie dough? that is the most bizarre thing i have EVER heard.

look, i love cookie dough more than humanly possible. i mean, i make MEALS out of that shit, but if someone GAVE me cookie dough, like in a cup, you know where that would be going? in the damn garbage.

because, ew.

Pants Wearer said...

Obviously, Ali, you're not as big a fan of dough as I am.

If it makes the thing any more palatable, it was from the local bakery, and not some skeevy random kitchen where you don't know if they wash their pots.

If that had been the case, I still would have eaten it, and loved it. Because that's how we who love cookie dough do.