Dipping of the cookies

Attempted my first batch of homemade Original Nestle TollHouse Chocolate Chip Cookies.

My Mom's recipe.
It's the best.

Yes, I've "tasted" better than Mom's cookie recipe, but nothing comes close to the childhood memories of the experience of my Mom's choc-chip cookies (frozen) dipped in milk. Sense memory is strong, and can supercede common sense or current memory in effect.

I wanted my daughters to have this childhood memory as well, so off to the land of beaten up butter and raw-cookie-dough snackin' I ventured. As both daughters watched, I read, measured, beat, measured, poured, measured, mixed, measured, scooped, baked and cooled.

It was at this point that the cookie consumption controversy commenced.

My wife loves her cookies hot and fresh from the oven, soft and gooey, rich and chewy. She also likes her pudding warm as well.

Me, I'm a cold food guy. I like my fruit cold, my veggies cold and raw, my pizza cold, my pudding, cookies, and doughnuts (yikes) cold.

Besides, if I'm to imbed the same memories I have of dipping my Mom's cookies into milk, they must be cold to do so. Warm, soft, mushy cookies won't tolerate the drastic change in temperature and the sudden submersion into the white, wet environment of a glass of milk.

My brother uses chopsticks to dip his cookie into his glass of milk. A technique developed out of common sense and his need not to get his fingers wet with milk.

I am a traditionalist. I use my fingers, but only dip the cookie in about 7/8's of the way into the milk, leaving just enough cookie above milk level to keep my fingers dairy-free. Sure, the entire cookie is not treated to the taste sensation that comes from a milk bath, but I have learned to ingest the remaining 1/8 of the cookie dry. Sacrifice is my middle name.

So, as I'm quickly bagging up as many cookies as I can to enter the required hour of deep freeze before being eaten, my girls are flagrantly following their mother in violation of the Family Cookie Act of 2005 -- two-handing them right off the cookie cooling rack into their crumb encrusted mouths.

Alas, I was able to "save" a dozen or so of the hearty chocolate chipped confections, and they sit happily being acclimated in the correct cookie consumption conditions -- the freezer.

Let the dipping of the cookies, begin.