The Original Recipe

My dad once told me he thought my mom got the idea of the chocolate chip cookie and the rolling pin from Eve. He said it all started with a recipe for sugar cookies mom received from Eve shortly after “the fall” when she and Eve were having a conversation about Adam’s depression and reluctance to getting off the bed of leaves. It seems he was fretful one evening, something about having to go to work, and Eve, in her intuitiveness, had the brilliant idea to bake. She threw some stuff from the fields together; made dough, got the stick she was going to use on Adam, started a fire (which was also new) rolled the dough instead of lambasting Adam, baked it and called it sugar cookies. This got Adam off the leaves and naming the left over animals which made him feel like he was contributing, I suppose. It also led to Adam going to work in order to come home hungry and enjoy Eve’s cooking which, prior to the cookie and fire, wasn’t much. At any rate, it may have been Eve who said, “The way to a man’s heart is through the rolling pin” or something like that.

Well, as soon as chocolate was discovered she put that in there and there you have it…chocolate chip cookies were conceived. Dad was convinced mom was there when this happened due to the fact that he saw her as very intelligent and she seemed to know everything, which could only mean she had been here since everything began and that would include the chocolate chip cookie…he may have been right. Actually I can only guess at how long mom’s been here because she was here when I got here.

My wife seems to know everything also but I cannot explain the source of her knowledge and would not attempt to estimate how long she’s been here…so we’re not going there. She arrived after I did but seems to have caught up with me and a whole bunch of other folks when it comes to cookies and every other thing. But there’s no way my wife’s as old as Eve or even mom because her cookies are loaded with oatmeal. Eve, from what mom says, never baked a cookie with oatmeal as it wasn’t even invented until after oats came along and that was probably years before my wife was born. Suffice to say, my wife appears to have infinite knowledge, is expert with the rolling pin and learned all of it from someone other than me. By the way, Mom knew the guy on the oatmeal box and says he was a very nice Quaker and Dad thought Mom hung the moon so inventing the chocolate chip cookie wasn’t much of a stretch. But I digress, again.

My daughter is now baking the chocolate chip cookie and I think she’s got the original recipe down pat! She’s been struggling with this for years because the “brilliant” people at Toll House changed mom and Eve’s recipe a few years back and since writing wasn’t invented until long after the original cookie recipe this thing has just been handed down from mouth to mouth you might say. Seems someone had the “bright” idea of inserting more flour and less yeast (things I know nothing about) or less salt and more butter or whatever and now with the box recipe, you have a cookie that tastes an awful lot like a pancake. So, somebody pass the organic milk, the daughter’s finally got it right and I can gain ten more pounds.