It's Spring, which means it's Girl Scout cookie season. Little Girl Scouts and Brownies everywhere are marching door to door selling boxes of Americana. If you live a few flights up or don't have any Girl Scouts in your neighborhood, you may have escaped the door-to-door sales period, but I would be surprised if you haven't encountered little green- or brown-vested girls somewhere else. Rosy-cheeked and armed with multi-hued boxes, they sit at card tables in front of your local hardware or grocery store, at parks, or near the door of your morning coffee spot ready to sell Thin Mints and Do-Si-Dos. You may even work with people who push cookies for their daughters at the office. The Girl Scouts and Brownies are everywhere this time of year, and many of us can't dodge buying a box or two (or ten). I mean, who can turn down a cute little 8-year old girl selling cookies to pay for the big end-of-year campout?
So each year I find myself with boxes of Samoas, Lemon Chalet Cremes, and Tagalongs, to go with the ever popular Thin Mints and Do-Si-Dos. But here's the problem: I hate Girl Scout cookies.
Don’t get me wrong. I don't hate the Girls Scouts of America. Unlike the Boy Scouts, with their appalling homophobia issues, the Girl Scouts are quite likable. The organization works to empower girls of all ages, which I think is great. My daughters were Brownies for a couple of years, and if the meeting time hadn't interfered with piano lessons, they would still be in their old troop hawking their own boxes of cookies.
My dislike of Girl Scout cookies has nothing to do with the Girl Scout organization itself and everything to do with the actual cookies. They're just not very good. Actually, they're awful. Whenever I see people look genuinely excited to get their boxes, I am confused. The chocolate in the Thin Mints and Samoas is waxy, while the Samoas themselves are so overtly sweet they make me nauseous. Trefoils are sort of like shortbread, but without the great buttery taste, so why bother? The Do-Si-Dos, which are peanut butter cookies, are probably the best of the bunch, but even they're a poor facsimile of what a real peanut butter cookie should taste like. And don't even get me started about the partially hydrogenated oils in every box.