WELCOME TO OUR KITCHEN: We're talking about Girl Scout cookies!

As always, we've got a one minute cooking tip. We're going to tell you about cooking. Girl Scout Cookies, and we've got a taste test of Girl Scout Cookies here with us, and as always, we will tell you what's making us happy in Food This Week. So let's get started.

Our one minute cooking tips. Tweezers. They are the unsung hero of the home kitchen. Oh, God. No, no, no. No, um. Not for placing micro greens. Not for doing No, I'm thinking about nose hairs. No, you get And I'm thinking about ear hair. Don't go and get those tweezers. Buy a set just for the kitchen. Oh, okay. Ew. You're going to use them for removing fish bones and We are such old men that we worry about ear hair. So, please go on.

Also, please Picking little bits of eggshell that fall into your eggs or even to a batter. You gotta get them out with a tweezer Okay, I'll allow it But these tweezers have to be dishwasher safe because you have to be able to really wash them I don't I don't pre judge or have any say on these one minute cooking tips there Bruce's thing says he's the best And this one I think I would have balked at.

Because, again, I'm just picking lint from between my toes and then somehow putting, getting cherry seeds out of tomatoes. I don't know. It's gross. I'm not using those tweezers. Oh, okay. So, anyway, removing fish bones and picking bits of eggshell. I suppose you can have one in your drawer. Just make sure nobody in the household knows. Uh, to use those tweezers. for other purposes. Okay, I'm going to get off. We're going to go on to our next segment about Girl Scout cookies.

Before we do that, let's just say, uh, we do have several social media feeds. We're on Instagram under our own names. There's also an Instagram channel cooking Bruce and Mark. There's a TikTok channel cooking Bruce and Mark, and there's a Facebook group cooking Bruce and Mark. You can join any of those groups. We are thrilled to connect with you there.

Okay. Our big major segment of this podcast, not only a question of where to Girl Scout cookies come from, but a taste test of the current varieties.

I have wondered for a while about what happened to Girl Scout cookies. What happened? Well, because it used to be that you'd see them every year. Someone's kid was always selling them. But where we live, that just doesn't happen. We don't run into people. with Girl Scout aged girls selling Girl Scout cookies. Okay, so here's the deal.

Uh, when we first started in the cooking career, we lived in Manhattan and we sang with the nation's first, I was the president of the board, of the nation's first gay and lesbian cooking group. Chorale and believe it or not. We didn't do show tunes. No, we did Mozart. So it was that kind of choir So I was the president board of that choir And of course there were always people in that choir who had kids and Girl Scout cookies showed up I don't know several times a year.

It seemed like yeah, you've got the order form you ordered them and I remember them We live in super We're in super rural New England that you can't even see another house from my house. Our driveway is a quarter mile long. There is nobody selling Girl Scout cookies around us. And you know, you cannot buy them in a store. You cannot buy them online. In fact, the one that you're going to Wait, wait, stop. I don't know this part. You can't buy them online? You can't buy them from the Girl Scouts.

The ones I have that we're tasting today are last year's cookies, and I got them on eBay. Oh, oh, seriously? Wait, so you have to have a Girl Scout? You have to be able to get them from a Girl Scout, yeah. Wow, okay, so, see, I learned something in my own podcast. Um, let me say that, uh, I know this, and Bruce didn't know this until now. If you don't know this, I'm here to tell you that Girl Scout Cookies actually started in Mesquite. Gogi, Oklahoma. Yeah, the mistletoe troop.

It was the mistletoe Girl Scout troop. Yeah, I knew this growing up as a Texan. This troop baked cookies and sold them in its high school cafeteria as a service project. And it was crazy. These cookies were baked by these Girl Scouts and their moms. They volunteered. And the sale of cookies went to finance troop activities. And this was as early as 1917. In fact, I I think that Juliette Gordon Low, Girl Scouts of the United States, was only started a few years earlier. Yeah, like 1912. Right.

So, it was just a few years, and then they started doing this, and then I should just say, in case you don't know, that in July of 1922, in the Girl Scouts of the USA magazine, there was an article by one Florence E. Neal. I hope that it was Mrs. Neal.

Florence E. Neal, but Florence E. Neal, and she was the local director of the Chicago, Illinois Girl Scout group, and she, or one of them, and she published a recipe for cookies, and she claimed that this would be a great way for troops to make money. And so she gave that out to troops. 2, 000 Girl Scout troops, she even estimated the cost of making six to seven dozen cookies, which was 26 cents. In 1922 money, 26 cents.

And she suggested they should be sold for that 26 cents per dozen so they can make six to seven times a profit. Right. And it was a great idea and that started, now there was a little bit of a problem here with World War II. Oh yeah, that. And especially the problem of sugar, flour, and butter were rationed. My mother still has a ration card from her childhood, uh, from World War II rationing. I think it's still got a butter stamp in it. Oh, can I use it?

Can I take it to Stop and Shop and get butter? I don't think so. So for a while, the Girl Scouts started selling calendars as a way to make money. It was an alternative, of course, to cookies. But once the war was over and the rationing had stopped, let's say by 1948, there were all kinds of Girl Scout cookies being baked. And they were being baked by professional bakeries, 29 of them around the country were licensed to bake the Girl Scout cookies.

And in the fifties, there were three varieties of Girl Scout cookies that were sort of nationalized, right? So they wanted to sort of make a even playing field. Everyone was selling the same ones. They had these shortbread cookies, these chocolate mints. Now we know they're thin mints. Right. And it kept going. And, you know, there were some, I believe, the cookie factory in Marietta, Oklahoma, as I remember. Now, this is out of my memory, and I haven't fact checked this.

But I believe there was a cookie factory in Marietta, Oklahoma, where some of my dad's family was from. And I think they were one of the makers of Girl Scout cookies. At the cookie. Uh, we, uh, I always had this thing we would pass by the cookie factory and they had a sign out front that said, you know, um, come in for fresh broken cookies. And I'm like, I don't want my cookies freshly broken. I want them. So it was the cookie outlet. Mark doesn't like going into cookie outlets.

No, I'm not cookie outlets. Mark doesn't like any kind of outlets because he thinks everything's used. I don't wear used underwear and I don't wear used jeans and I, I'm sorry, I know that someone has had that pair of underwear on. And now it's in an outlet store. Those 1950s sandwich cookies became peanut butter sandwich cookies in the 60s. Thank you, boomers. And by the early 80s, we were down to four national bakers making cookies.

And whatever flavors they made had to include thin mints, the peanut butter sandwich, which now is called do si dos, and the shortbread. Okay, so now it's gone so far that there are actually kosher and halal versions of good Girl Scout cookies I mean it's become a national phenomenon and It's hard for me to know whether it still is as big as it used to be because again that we live so Remotely in New England.

I know you think and before we get to the taste test I know you think of New England as part of the East Coast and the East Coast is you know Jammed with people and it's true if you're on the coast But the minute you leave the coast of even the East Coast and start inland, where we are, the population thins dramatically. And where we are, there ain't many people around. Unlike what they say in Massachusetts, where it is thickly settled, we are thinly settled.

Yes. In Massachusetts, when you enter a town, any town from Boston, which is insane, or let's say Springfield, Massachusetts, down to some po don't know where town, the town name will be there, and it'll always say thickly settled, which just cracks me up. Yes, Boston is thickly settled. But, um, much of New England is not. And I mean, our town has 600, 610 people, I think, in it, something like that. And we don't have a stoplight and we don't have any police.

We have a volunteer ambulance from the next town and we have a volunteer fire department, but there is no police present. And we don't have a single stoplight in our town. So I mean, it's Very rural. Thinly settled. Thinly settled. Okay, so, that's enough about New England, let's talk about how you got these cookies from Oh, well I got them From used cookies from eBay. I got them on eBay, but I made sure that they were within their expiration date, and so Were the packages opened?

No, they were not opened. Did they have drool on them? No, they did not have drool on them. And I checked, I checked for needle marks to make sure nobody injected anything into But I will say what I thought someone might have injected into these is shrinkage liquid because maybe it's just that when I was a kid, my hands were smaller. No no no. These cookies look tiny. No, the samosas have shrunk. These, I'm looking at, I'm holding a do si do, which is the peanut butter sandwich cookie.

And this is about the size of a Ritz cracker. Okay, so we're going to try a do si do. Mm hmm. Um, no. That's a big no out of me. No. I'm eating it right now and I can tell you that is a hard no. It's a hard pass. I should be clear, I don't like soft cookies. So, I bit into that. And it was soft, and, no, I don't like it. Well, it's also humid, and it's New England. No, okay, that cookie is meant to be soft. And, listen, no shine on people who like soft cookies.

A lot of people like rich, soft cookies. I like crunch. So that's who I am, and when I bit into that, I was expecting the thing to break, because it's a peanut butter cookie, and it didn't, and I don't want it. I also have to say, these are all dairy free, and that's part of the deal. So now I'm going to try the what used to be my favorite, which is the thin mint. Oh, the thin mints. Okay. Now I'm looking at it again. It's about the size of a Ritz cracker.

It has holes that you can see through the chocolate layer. So it actually looks like a Ritz cracker covered in chocolate. Okay. Those indentations. I've been around the food business too much. It has a little indentations, like a domino on the top of it. You know those are so they can use less chocolate. There are fewer grams per chocolate per wafer with those dots in them. Really? You don't think those dots are like where the batter was squirted out into the circles and No, I don't.

I've been around the food business too much. Um, this tastes like the standard Thin Mint and I like Thin Mints. I will always like Thin Mints. I like them because they're crunchy and as you can guess, I prefer them out of the freezer because once out of the freezer they are super crunchy. Well, maybe the Dosey Dose should go in the freezer. Ugh. I just don't like soft cookies. So what are these milk chocolatey things that have peanut butter. So what are these called? These are called Tagalog.

Oh, so they're kind of like squashed versions of Malam Mars. But inside, instead of marshmallow, there is a shortbread cookie topped with a little peanut butter, and the whole thing is dipped in milk chocolate. Yeah. Very sweet. But crunchy. You said dairy free, but now you're saying milk chocolate. I know. So I'm not sure When I say dairy free, I mean they're not cooked with butter. They're all cooked with like palm oil and shortening. Okay. Um, those are okay. I wouldn't write home about them.

Um, they're just okay. Now, now the Samoas, which always used to be my absolute favorite. Oh, they were everyone's favorite. Right after Thin Mint. They're with the coconut and the caramel and the chocolate. I like that. They used to be chewier. There's like a cookie ring that's dipped in caramel. The top is dipped in coconut and the bottom is dipped in chocolate. So, carry on with the podcast.

Well, I can say that my A1c is going to probably go up in my next blood test, but And we'll say this, um, While I like them, and I understand the point of them, They do have a slightly chemical tang. They have an industrial quality. They do. These are definitely an industrial cookie at this point. They're, to be honest, if I'm going to eat an industrial cookie, I'd probably rather eat an Oreo. I mean, I breathed in, I finished my, I did eat the whole Samoa.

And I finished it, and when I breathed in just now, I did get that kind of, Aerosol like flavor in my mouth. I can't explain it exactly. It's kind of like the old aerosol deodorants It has a very chemical quality to it. It's a Okay. Yeah. So, as we can see, we kind of like the Thin Mints. We're not fans of the other ones that we just tried, but The Samoas, I can't give up on, because I love them so much from years past.

We're going to have to do a follow up, because since these were last year's cookies, and the expiration date is not for another month only, I am going to get some fresh That explains the aerosol taste. I am going to get some fresh Girl Scout cookies this year. I'm going to have to find a Girl Scout. I'm going to have to go out Oh. Oh, that kind of podcast then? Okay, go on. I'm going to go out and find me a Girl Scout. Oh, God. And I'm going to make her sell me some cookies. Oh, gosh.

Okay. Oh, gosh. And then we're going to taste them on our own, and we're just going to do it as a what's making us happy in food if we like them better than we like these. Before we get to the final segment of this podcast, let me say that it's great to have you on this journey. It'd be great if you could rate this podcast and subscribe to it. All you need to do is whatever service you're on, give it a star rating. Can we ask for five stars, please?

Um, and if you can take the time and just write nice podcast on whatever platform you're on, Audible, uh, on, uh, Apple Podcasts. They don't let you do this on Spotify, but other places they do, Podchaser, other places, it'd be great. A rating and a review really helps us and we are otherwise unsupported. Okay, the final traditional segment of the podcast,

what's making us happy in food this week? Grilled peaches. It is still stone fruit season around here, and to be honest, Mark and I buy the best peaches possible at Costco. They sell big boxes of peaches that are juicy and yummy. And for dessert the other night, I cut one in half and I threw it on the grill for about five minutes over high heat. It got charred and caramelized. I drizzled it with honey and aged balsamic and shaved fresh Parmigiano Reggiano, and that was dessert.

So grilled peaches are what's making me happy. Your food this week. Okay. What's making me happy is something I asked for. I mean, one of the benefits of living with a chef and marrying a chef is that you can ask for dinner and you get dinner. So, um, I said that I wanted something Korean and the point of this something Korean, I got a grilled. pork tenderloin. But the point of this is what I really wanted was rice and kimchi. It is the time of year in which Bruce is making kimchi.

We have a big bottle of kimchi going in the back refrigerator. It's nicely soured and frozen. And I so just wanted a big blob of rice and kimchi on the top of it. And I should tell you that this year's kimchi is super hot. It's, wow, it's hot. Yeah, I just, I just like dumped it all in. Oh my gosh, it's hot. If you want to see how Bruce makes kimchi, check out the YouTube video on our YouTube channel, Cooking with Bruce and Mark. You can see him make kimchi there.

I love kimchi, and by the way, I should just add, and this is something that's interesting, we only make it in the fridge, so you don't have to worry about room temperature ferment. I know it's much, much more traditional to do a room temperature ferment, but if you're patient, that is 10 days, 7 days, 10 days, somewhere along in there, you can get it to ferment in the fridge. You just have to be very super patient with it.

You do, and I will say that I use fish sauce in mine instead of like salted octopus and all that raw fish. Yes, you do, you do. It's fish sauce for that umami wang in it and, um, I, I just really wanted a big pile of rice with kimchi on it and that's basically what I ate with a little pork last night for dinner. Okay. That's the podcast for this week. Thanks for being part of this journey with us. Thanks for spending your time with us.

We hope you've made your day or your drive time or wherever you are. We hope we made it more enjoyable and we hope we've encouraged you to go buy some gross cut cookies and try them on your own. And we tell you what's making us happy in food every week on Cooking With Bruce and Mark. So please, please go to our Facebook page. Group Cooking with Bruce and Mark and share what is making you happy in food this week. We want to know, we want to read about it.

We want to even try it and maybe make it here on Cooking with Bruce and Mark.