A Memory for National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day

It's late in the day and I just learned that today, August 4, is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day.  Who knew?!  It's almost too late to post if I want to commemorate the day, but it's never too late to share a memory.

My father, Lee Doyle, never really liked chocolate chip cookies.  It wasn't that he disliked chocolate.  He would occasionally buy candy bars and really liked Clark bars but he said once that chocolate candy doesn't belong in cookies.  In fact, if chocolate chip cookies were the only dessert or evening snack offered, he would decline and, if at home, would go to the kitchen and fix himself some bread and milk.  He was born in 1913 and grew up in a time when chunk chocolate was less commonly used in baking.  I could never understand how he could pass up those cookies but that's just me.

About the time I was 14 or 15, my brother brought his girlfriend home to introduce all of us.  She visited off and on for maybe a year.  I'm certain that sometime during the times she visited my dad declined chocolate chip cookies, though he probably didn't make a big deal about it and it's a good guess she and my brother never discussed my father's cookie preferences.

After a time my brother proposed and they set a marriage date.  It was the expectation during those years for the the groom's parents to go to the home of the bride's parents to introduce themselves.  My parents and I travelled the four hours from our home to my soon-to-be-sister-in-law's family farm to meet her parents and the rest of her family.  They were warm and welcoming.  All went well until my brother's fiancée offered around a plate of just-baked cookies.

We all accepted a cookie and took a bite.  Yum, I thought.  My father, on the other hand, had a different reaction.  He didn't say anything but he chewed oh-so-slowly as if he were eating something distasteful.  When we were offered a second cookie, he declined.  My father thought he was about to eat an oatmeal raisin cookie.  What a surprise to find they were not raisins but chocolate chips.  Poor him.

Sometime later I remember  Dad saying to my sister-in-law, "You got me with those cookies when we visited your family.  I thought they had raisins in them."  We all chuckled.  It was then that my sister-in-law learned that my father did not like chocolate chip cookies.

I don't ever remember seeing my father eat a chocolate chip cookie -- except that one day.

And that's my chocolate chip cookie story for National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day.  I hope you enjoyed a chocolate chip cookie or two today.

--Nancy.

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