Girl Scout Cookies

It is the time of year for Girl Scout cookies!  These cookies are like seeing fireworks on the 4th of July.  They get the "oooohh" and "aaaaah" response.  Everyone likes Girl Scout cookies!  There are the Thin Mints, the Samoas, the Do Si Do's, the Trefoils and all of the other varieties.  Everyone has a favorite!  My favorite is the Do Si Do's as I love peanut butter cookies! And let me tell you, I have eaten and sold my share of Girl Scout cookies because I was involved the the scouts from the time I was in grade school as a Brownie all the way to being a Senior Scout.  I have seen boxes and boxes of Girl Scout cookies in my lifetime. I think I even earned a badge for selling them!  I earned lots of badges over the years and had to do a lot of crazy stuff to get them too
I remember the time that I had to go on a makeshift camping trip down by the creek where I lived back in the 1960's.  I brought my mom and dad along to participate.  I had to make a campfire, cook food, wash the dishes and practice all of the safety procedures for camping.  The big trick was the lighting the campfire. I had to gather the straw, kindling, twigs and a few larger pieces of wood from the surrounding woods.  I laid everything out on a big rock that was beside the creek and started setting up my little campfire.  I was so enthusiastic about it as in my heart I am a true fire bug.  I am totally fascinated by fire! (Don't let that worry you though, I am not a serial killer.) So, I got everything ready and took out my matches -- yes we were allowed to use matches and not really "rough it" like Tom Hanks had to do in "Castaway"!  Thank goodness!!  So there I am trying to light the match and of course it was a little windy that day.  I was having a heck of a time.  Well, unbeknown to me, my dad had brought along lighter fluid. Oh yea! And when I wasn't looking he doused my little campfire with a nice squirt of that lighter fluid.  Guess what happened??  I got the match to light and stay lit and stuck it next to my campfire and WHOOOOSH!  FLAMES!!  I just about fell over from the shock and luckily I still had my eyebrows intact!  Good thing I already had my First Aid badge!  At the time I remember being upset with my dad because I didn't want to earn my badge due to cheating with the lighter fluid.  He just laughed at me and said it would be okay.  I was seven years old...I believed him!  So now that I had my campfire, I proceeded to cook a meal on my trusty Girl Scout pans.  The pans were neat because they all fit together with a little clamp and you ended up having three little pans not to mention the REALLY cool collapsible cup.  Remember the collapsible cups???  You have to be my age to remember that! (you figure it out - I was 7 years old in 1964 and ladies don't tell their age!) If you aren't old enough you really missed it because they were too cool!  I am sure that my campfire meal consisted of baked beans because what would a Girl Scout meal be without beans!  And, of course, smores for dessert...those yummy marshmallow, melty chocolate graham cracker thingys.  A scout staple around every campfire.  I always started scoping out the perfect stick for the marshmallow as soon as I got settled during any camping trip!  This day was no different!  And, I liked my marshmallow burnt on the outside and runny on the inside.  YUM! YUM!  I remember that day so well and I accomplished everything I needed to do in order to earn my Campfire badge.  I even went in the creek and captured some tadpoles.  That was the deal!  I don't think kids today even know what a tadpole is!  Too bad!  It was so much fun and then you would end up with lots of frogs in your yard! 
Anywhoo back to the Girl Scout cookies.  As I said, I have sold my share of them.  So this year, I got my box of Do Si Do's. I opened the box of 24 cookies that cost $3.50 and was a bit surprised.  My Do Si Do was about the size of a Susan B. Anthony dollar.  What happened?  My cookie shrunk..not just a little but a whole lot! I remember Do Si Do's being as big as a silver dollar and much thicker.  It's like two of this years cookies are about the size of the cookie I remember having in the past.  I felt cheated by the Girl Scouts!  I mean if you went into Starbucks and bought a cookie that was the size of a Susan B. Anthony dollar would you expect to pay $1.25 for it!  Really!  Truly!  I don't think so.  I think you would feel there was some price gouging going on.  But obviously there is some magic in Girl Scout cookies because we just hand over the money and we are HAPPY to do it.  It is sort of like in Field of Dreams -- "Build it and they will come!".  With Girl Scout cookies it would be "bake it and they will eat"!  I think if the cookies were $5.00 per box we would buy them.  Which makes me wonder...is there something IN the Girl Scout cookies that we don't know about.  Some subliminal ingredient that draws us to the cookie...??? We must ponder this question.  So the next time you have your favorite Girl Scout cookie take a good look at it because somehow it has turned into an iconic cookie that we will pay any price to have even if they get smaller and smaller every year. 
Until next time,
Anne