Warm Fuzzies #4: More-ish Cookies

Warm Fuzzies #4: More-ish cookies

Maybe I really should give up on publishing and go to culinary school.

Several weeks ago, I baked cookies to thank my mentor, a young British chap named Damian, for "showing me the ropes" and basically helping me learn the basics of the job he had vacated and into which I had been catapulted without instructions manual. The cookies were oatmeal raisin, and they went over quite well--so well in fact, that Damian, in his packaging ignorant manner, asked me where I had bought them. (I had delivered them to the office kitchen in a shoebox lined in cling-wrap, with a handwritten "help yourself in honor of Damian" -type sign propped in front.)

About two weeks later, I needed Damian's help shelving a journal: I simply could not find where to place it. Most of the journals my boss, Joe, received, were located on one particular set of shelves in front of my cubicle-mate, Sarah's, desk, but this one was not there. Obviously, having held my position for over a year, Damian would know where other issues of this journal were hidden, so I decided to pay him a visit at his cubicle across the office.

Upon my describing the predicament and showing him the journal, Damian informed me that it was filed in front of Sarah’s desk. I, in turn, informed him that I had just spent five minutes staring at the journals arranged on those shelves, and this journal was most definitely not among them. He insisted otherwise and suggested we “go have a look.”

On the way to the shelves, he asked if I would like to make a bet. He had probably only asked in jest, but I was so frustrated by my inability to do even the simplest task without his help—filing a journal, for heaven’s sake!—that I said sure; what were we betting? He had no suggestions, so I made the terms: if the journal’s companions were there, I would bake him more cookies. If they weren’t, he had to come running with the lunchtime group more regularly. (I went a few times a week, mostly for the companionship, and I like Damian’s company, so I wanted him to come along.)

Of course, the journal was there.

Thus, I found myself rolling sweet sticky balls of dough in cinnamon and sugar, baking snickerdoodles the following Sunday afternoon. I didn’t know what kind of cookies Damian would want, so I just guessed at what I thought might be popular and easy to make, and went with my intuition. Yesterday, I received the sweetest confirmation that my intuition was, indeed, accurate.

Good Lord,
These are simply some of the most more-ish cookies ever devised by man. I will be enormously fat by the end of the week,
Damian

I wrote back, however, asking: what does more-ish mean? I did assure him, however, that it being Thursday and with only one day left in the week, he still looked trim and spry to me.

I do love baking for people.