Girl Scouts with cookies are coming soon to your door
Girl Scout cookie season is here, so get off the couch and answer the door when your neighborhood Scouts knock. I’m a big fan of the whole Girl Scout thing.
Warning: It’s also election season, so peek before you open the door. It might be a candidate. No, you may not put a sign in my front yard.
Girl Scout cookies are an $800 million industry, with 70 percent of the money sticking with the Scouts. I don’t mind giving until it hurts … my stomach.
I’ve been eating them ever since I was big enough to swing a broomstick.
I’m lucky, I was raised in Elizabeth, N.J., home of the Burry Biscuit Company, one of the original bakers of Girl Scout cookies. I spent a lot of summer nights in the Burry Biscuit parking lot, eating broken Girl Scout cookies and playing stickball.
There are two ways of playing stickball. In New York City, they play in the street, and bounce a pink rubber ball or tennis ball toward the batter, who tries not to break a window in the apartment buildings on both sides of the street. You can find photos of Willie Mays playing stickball with kids in Harlem.
In New Jersey, we drew a strike zone on a wall at a school yard or parking lot. We used a broom handle for a bat. It
wasn’t a “We were so poor … ” thing. It was because we could fire a Spalding High-Bouncer so fast, the hitter could never get a real baseball bat around on the ball.
They still play it up in Jersey and Philly. There’s even a Major Stickball League. Here’s what it looks like on YouTube: http://bit.ly/1mdrG1W.
My comedy friend, Richard Lewis, is a tremendous stickball player. Lewis will look you straight in the eye and say, “I beat everybody.” True, he once beat Pete Rose in stickball. Beat Larry David, too. Lewis prefers playing stickball with a tennis ball with the fuzz burned off. If you get hit with one of those, you have a welt for a week.
One of the legendary stickball stadiums was the Burry Biscuit parking lot. The Burry Biscuit building was 2 million square feet … until it burned down in 2011. It covered an entire block on Newark Avenue. They had a small store that sold broken cookies, factory seconds and slightly irregulars for half price.
If the wind was blowing right in summer, Elizabeth smelled like a plate of Grandma’s chocolate chip cookies straight from the oven. If the wind shifted, Elizabeth smelled like the Bayway Refinery, not nearly as pleasant. Burry Biscuit didn’t just make Girl Scout cookies. They made Scooter Pies, which were like Moon Pies down here. And the chocolate wafers for ice cream sandwiches. And Gauchos, same as Girl Scout Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies.
And Fudge Towns, which were two chocolate cookies stuck together with chocolate fudge. Think those tasted good? New on the market
The most popular Girl Scout cookie today is Thin Mints (25 percent of total sales). They’re followed by Caramel deLites (19 percent), Peanut Butter Patties (13 percent), Peanut Butter Sandwiches (11 percent) and Shortbreads (9 percent).
I’m not Captain Courageous, but to show solidarity with my gluten-free buddy Betty, I taste-tested the new Chocolate Chip Gluten-Free Shortbread Girl Scout Cookie.
The name is a mouthful, but the cookies aren’t. They’re little, bite-size cookies made with real butter and real chocolate chips. They contain no artificial flavors, colors, high fructose corn syrup, palm oil or hydrogenated oils. They come in a resealable bag instead of the familiar Girl Scout cookie box.
I don’t have any dietary restrictions (except for tofu), so I’ll stick with my favorite Girl Scout cookie, the Thanks-a-Lot … shortbread cookies with a layer of chocolate frosting on the bottom. Love those. I usually buy two boxes from five or six different girls. I keep them in the freezer. They last longer than it takes me to eat them.
Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Shortbread Girl Scout Cookies are being tested in 20 markets. They’re available in Houston, but only at “booth sales.” That means the Scout at your front door won’t have them.
Booth sales are those groups of girls who hover outside supermarkets. They could teach lions how to swarm around prey. Sure, try pretending you’re talking on the cellphone, but they’ll bust you. They’re masters of the cookie guilt trip.
Until Girl Scout cookie season ends March 30, I’m food shopping after 10 p.m. Pushing your cart around workers re-stocking shelves is like driving an obstacle course.
ken.hoffman@chron.com
Leon Hale’s column does not appear this week.