While you probably gathered from yesterday’s post that I enjoy cooking, I truly despise baking in all of its forms. I think it has something to do with the fact that baking requires following a recipe exactly; precise measurements of ingredients like baking soda and flour can make or break a cake or pie. And that’s exactly why I suck at it. I can’t just make up a cookie recipe as I go along — adding a little of this and that — like I can with a pasta or vegetable dish. I’ve done that before and gotten comments like, “Wow, this cake cuts like a Porterhouse!” Not exactly the reception for which I was hoping.
However, if you’ve read this blog more than once, you also probably know that I’m a glutton with a serious sweet tooth (Whoopie pies, anyone?). So though I wish I could bake myself spectacular confections to scarf down in the throes of my pregnant cravings, I can’t. So I have to satisfy myself with the next best thing: store bought cookie dough. My obsession with raw dough began as a small child while baking chocolate chips with my mom and it’s never really gone away. It reached its peak while in high school when I worked at Dairy Queen and during each four-shift I’d eat around 100-200 dough nuggets stolen from the Blizzard candy stash.
And though every doctor on the planet will advise a knocked up gal like myself to avoid ingredients like raw eggs (found in almost every store bought dough out there), I say, screw that. I’m a risk-taker. Plus, I’m a pig and I just can’t help myself. So when I found “Wholly Wholesome Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough” at the grocery store, I was thrilled! Yeah, it still has eggs in it, but with a name like “Wholly Wholesome” — who cares? I feel like I’m downing spinach and kale with every bite of 70% organic raw dough I consume. I know, logically, this snack is not the equivalent of munching on carrot sticks, but sometimes I prefer just to trick myself into thinking pure butter and sugar is a wise dietary choice. It’s like a euphemism for my stomach!
Faced with these options in my fridge for breakfast (fat free Greek yogurt, cherries, whole grain English muffins, or chocolate chip cookie dough) -- isn't my choice obvious? Good thing it's the same thing as eating a egg-white omelet!!
As I was scarfing down a Buster Bar today, I got to thinking about my first real part time job. Of course I had been a papergirl with my friend, Julie, but that didn’t really count because we just had our parents drive us around (plus we delivered to an apartment building — it was a cinch). So my first REAL gig was at Tracydale Dairy Queen in Erie my sophomore year of high school. Of course, Julie worked with me there too and we pretty much just ate our way through our shifts.
It was that old school kind of Dairy Queen. The kind where you drive up and park and get out of your car to order. The building was like 50 years old and on hot summer nights, there was nothing quite like working a shift at the good ‘ole DQ. There’d be 30 people lined up at the two windows and we’d be smashed inside the teeny un-air conditioned structure, sweaty and covered with soft serve from head to toe. We’d laugh hysterically when customers would ask for “Penis Butter Parfittis” or complain that they found “floor tile in the butterscotch sundae.” (True story)
Being a Dairy Queen alumna has its advantages, too. I’d put money on Harvard alums don’t even have as much pull. For instance, when I was home for a friend’s bachelorette, I was charged with getting a cake. So of course, I walked into my local Dairy Queen and made it happen. This is the conversation that led to the creation of the most fabulous bachelorette ice cream cake in the world.
Me (to the girls behind the counter): Hi. Is there a manager on duty today?
DQ Gals: No, sorry, just us.
Me: Good.
DQ Gals: Why?
Me: I used to work here too and have a special request.
DQ Gals: What?
Me: Can you draw a gigantic penis on a 20″ chocolate and vanilla ice cream cake for me?
DQ Gals (without batting an eye): What color should we make it?
Me: The cake?
DQ Gals (exasperated): No. The penis. We’ll do it, but what color do you want the dick?
Julie, a musical comedian in LA, is my oldest friend; I’ve known her since birth. We were born 13 days apart but our friendship actually goes back generations (hey, that’s Erie, PA for ya, folks!) My grandfather knew her grandma, then our dads were buddies, and I guess we started up when our moms were pregnant at the same time.
We went to the same pre-school, grade school, and high school. We got all the same jobs (shared a paper route, served cones at DQ, taught sailing at our Yacht Club). Fitting that she was the one who introduced me to my husband; Grey was a classmate of hers at the Naval Academy and I’ll never forget her telling me she had found me “the one!” Â Even after graduation, we lived two streets apart in San Diego, she was the maid of honor in my wedding, and we continue to sign most emails YBFF (your best friend forever).
For all our similarities and shared history, I think the tie that binds us is something deeper; a sense of warped humor – or even mental disturbance. I think the following scenario truly captures the essence of our friendship:
Julie is a girl with whom I once devised a scheme to trick the other kids at summer camp into thinking we ate real human feces off of a port-o-potty seat. Why we thought this was a good idea, I’ll never know. We had the plan drawn out to a tee: We’d prepare a batch of raw brownie mix in Zip-lock bags to transfer to camp. Then, during lunch, when most kids clustered around the port-o-potties shooting the shit (no pun intended), we’d sneak the brownie mix onto the toilet seat and shock our friends when we stuck our hands in the fake crap. We planned to then lick our fingers and say, “Mmmmm…Poop tastes good!” (This is a quote I will never forget; I still sign her Christmas card with this phrase). Anyhoo, this sounded like the plot of the century to our 10-year-old selves, but my dad caught wind of the strategy, and foiled it when he reminded us that the other kids would probably never believe we were actually joking and would go on believing forever that we really ate human shit off a toilet seat at summer camp. Complete and utter social ostracism was avoided.
Yes, I’m thankful to call this person my best friend.
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