Holiday Chips Ahoy Cookies!
I’d originally intended to bridge Dino Drac’s Halloween and Christmas seasons with some non-holiday “neutral” posts, and while I’ll still probably do that, this couldn’t wait.
Google tells me that Holiday Chips Ahoy aren’t new for 2012, but tonight was the first time I’d even seen them, and if I could paint a picture of that moment, you’d see me with a head-wide smile, rendered in acrylics.
Look, I’m trying to keep my Christmas madness in check. The explosion will come soon, but I know it isn’t time for it yet. Cookies like these are no help at all. I can’t look at this package and not get the immediate urge to cue up that one Paul McCartney song everybody but me hates.
The bag (Can we call this a bag?) is terrific, mixing a snowy white base with icy blue wintry things. You may take the “Holiday” moniker to mean that these are nondenominational Chips Ahoy cookies, but actually, they’re more like all-denominational Chips Ahoy cookies. Looking over the bag’s various slogans, we’re wished a merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah and a happy Kwanzaa.
I have a feeling I may have misinterpreted the meaning of “denominational.” You’ll live.
The package’s decorative symbols go along with that theme. There’s Christmas’s tree, Hanukkah’s menorah, and Kwanzaa’s “unity” thing, which looks a bit like two paper clips. I dig it.
I should confess that I’ve flip-flopped on the “Christmas vs. Holiday” issue. After spending so many years screaming “CHRISTMAS” at audiences partly composed of folks who do not celebrate it, I’ve come to accept “Holiday” as a fair-for-all necessity. Nabisco was right to pander so broadly.
The cookies are handsome. Each looks like an alien world. Mixing regular chocolate chips with festive red, green and white chips, they’re as picturesque as they are delicious.
Ever hear of lac bugs? Kerria lacca, if you want to get technical. The females of that species secrete the resin we use to make shellac. Lac bugs have existed for millions of years, but I remain firm in the belief that God created them just so I’d have some way of preserving Holiday Chips Ahoy cookies in 2012. I can’t eat them forever, but with a quick dip in bug juice, I can look at them until the day I die.
Sensing that a photo of a bag and a photo of a cookie would not give this entry enough visual appeal, I went ahead and made Holiday Chips Ahoy ice cream sandwiches.
Good ones, too. I used peppermint ice cream, which had crushed bits of red and green candy pieces swimming around in it. Then I dipped the sides into bowls of sugar crystals, because if you’re already eating two cookies and a giant spoonful of ice cream, you might as well go all-in.
The results were dangerous. Like I mentioned, I’m trying to keep my Christmas spirit in check. If the sight of the Chips Ahoy package had me rocking out to Paul McCartney, the sight of these sandwiches has me halfway up the attic stairs, looking for the box marked “manger.” DANGEROUS.
But maybe there’s another way to look at this. Maybe the sugar-dipped Chips Ahoy sandwiches helped me ladle off the excess. Maybe doing this now will help me get through the next week or two without doing too much more.
We’ll see, I guess. If the next post is about how I always wanted the baby turtles from My Blue Heaven, then it worked. If the next post is a tribute to Uncle Louis, we’re all fucked.
