Trina Machacek: How about those cookies

All the things in our lives that we like and don’t like make us special. For instance, cookies. I’ve made enough cookies in my baking career to fill a nuclear submarine. A nuclear submarine! Google says that inside of a submarine can measure 500,000 cubic feet. WOW. Putting that in perspective for me it’s like if a cookie jar was one foot by one foot by one foot square, you could get 500,000 cookie jars inside a big submarine. Now if each of those cookie jars held just two cookies that would be a million cookies! Yeah. I think I could give that number a run for the money in my cookie baking career. It’s not that I like a lot of cookies, I just like baking and giving cookies away. But! Yes a crunchy cookie “but.” But what are the best cookies in the world to me?

I would guess the original Toll House chocolate chip cookies are by far and away the most requested cookies that come out of most kitchens. Not to say that oatmeal raisin or peanut butter don’t have their place. Chances are that chocolate chip cookies would probably be in most of those 500,000 cookie jar boxes. They’re yummy, producing a wonderful aroma and mile-wide chocolatey smiles. But my favorite? Not quite yet. First, here’s a story of recent events.

I was invited to a family dinner at a neighbor’s home. It was a full table of 13 wonderful people where the food was great and the conversation was lively and interesting. Kinda like the dinner you hope you always get invited to. I usually get really nervous about going somewhere new and by myself. I know hard to believe huh? But I got into my little bright yellow Tracker and zipped over because these neighbors are great people and very welcoming. Whew! It was especially nice since I knew there wouldn’t be any Trina family drama as has usually occurred in my past old family dinners of years gone by. No food fights, no raised voices, no — well such stories for other times!

One snippet of conversation was of cookies. Ah! Something I know about. One man surrounded by his wonderfully nice wife and his adorable children mentioned he recently picked up a cookie his wife had made. As a visual and adding to the story he picked up a dessert size plate and said the cookie was about that size and he grinned. He also added that he picked the cookie with the least amount of chocolate chips in it. I perked up at that notion. He went on to talk about the goodness of the cookie but added his wife puts a shake of salt on the top of her cookies and he wasn’t too sure about that and his table mates laughed. I’m so going to try her secret for sure next time I bake. Must be more to the salt of the story but I just picked up on the “least amount of chocolate chips” part. As he finished his story and put down his plate and while we were waiting for dessert to fill the void on his and all the other plates I asked him if he did indeed like chocolate chip cookies without any chocolate chips. I added that I asked because I love chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips and I have NEVER met anyone but me who has this strange cookie desire. To my surprise he agreed that he too liked just the plain ole cookie. I was amazed. In all my years of making chocolate chip cookies, some with nuts and some without, I always bake a few dozen cookies of just the dough first without anything but the butter and sugar and eggs and flour and butter. Oh I already said butter didn’t I? HAHA

See his wife’s one special cookie because she likes a sprinkle of salt on her cookie and I’m one because I like cookies without anything inside or outside. You might like just chocolate chips in cookies while others like them loaded with chocolate chips and nuts. Not to mention those who just want to eat the dough. We’re all different but special. I admit I don’t chop up nuts. I put them in as big pieces. I mean come on if you are going to have a nut in your cookie you don’t want to go nuts-o mining for it do you?

Then we all ate the white chocolate mocha cheesecake the hostess made for dessert! I so have to wrangle another invite to that table.

Trina lives in Eureka, Nevada. She is on Facebook, Instagram and at itybytrina@yahoo.com