in a way, i baked these cookies for dead people.

going free form! happy memorial day, americans! time to get out there & honor soldiers who've been killed in the line of duty and/or have a BBQ & get drunk! personally, i'm more in it for the BBQ angle, but that's just because i'm TOTALLY a communist and/or socialist. this year, i'm heading to the carroll gardens area of brooklyn for a backyard BBQ & the host suggested that i bring along some form of dessert. as a professional snacker, i was more than happy to oblige but not put a tremendous amount of effort or money into it.

at first i was going to go the enhanced brownie route but that usually requires eggs, an item which has never entered my fridge. as such, i decided it'd be cheaper & more fun to go with some sort of hippie cookie dough. luckily i was in park slope, where you can find dozens of hippie cookie doughs within a ten-block radius. i went with this one...

...immaculate baking co's triple chocolate cookie dough, which goes for $5.49 per package at a park slope grocery store, which is a buck more than it costs on the company's website. they're all-natural & organic & the front of the packaging features a little girl from "the cookie tree," a painting by folk artist carl dixon. gotta be honest here...it's not very good at all.

according to the packaging, immaculate baking got their start back in 1995 in wakefield, MA in some dude named scott's garage. based on my knowledge of wakefield, which is a few cities north of boston, i assume it started like this:

friend: hey scotty. you make some good fuckin' cookies. why don't staht selling them fuckers?

scott: you think they're that fuckin' good?

friend: definitely. you could staht a cookie business right here in your gah-rah-ge.

scott: wow. i guess i could. where would i pahk my cah though?

friend (sighing): you could pahk your cah in hahvad yahd.

scott: that's like a half hour south of here. that makes ZERO sense.

friend: i know.

here's how to make the best memorial day BBQ cookies EVER:

• on memorial day, get woken up 45 minutes earlier than you'd planned to by the upstairs neighbors' dog, a shitty tiny dog that will not stop yelping at the birds outside of our home. they're just fucking birds you asshole!
• get out of bed & turn on the black lips' new album, arabia mountain, almost as loud as you can. replace your anger with head-bobbing.
• go to the kitchen & preheat the oven to 350°.
• take a shower. you stink.
• if you're baking for others, put clothes on.
• take the cookie dough pieces out of the package & place them about 2" apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.

• lick cookie dough off of your fingers even though the packaging specifically warns you against doing so. spit in the face of god.

• open up your oven & realize that although you set it to 350°, the oven thermometer reads 400°. curse your shitty oven. tell yourself "i must do this EXACTLY as the instructions say or memorial day will be RUINED." adjust the temperature & grab a beer because it's memorial day & it's after noon & you have at least a pint glass worth of davidson brothers' ESB left over from last night.
• put the dough pieces in the oven for 10-14 minutes.

• remove them from the oven, but only once you've convinced yourself that while they may still be incredibly soft to the touch it's ok to take them out because the instructions say to stop baking them NOW.
• let them cool for at least a few minutes & try one of them out to make sure nobody will die a horrible memorial day BBQ cookie death.
• judge the cookie: it's not moist. it's not dry. it's somewhere in between, which i guess is what i could expect if i bought a package of cookies in the store. they're supposedly made with three types of chocolate but all i'm seeing is the white chocolate chips & the dark chocolate cookie. maybe the dark chocolate cookie's made from a two-chocolate blend, but c'mon now...how's anyone supposed to notice that? UPDATE: at the BBQ, we determined that there was a second, non-white chocolate chip in the cookies. i'll eat at least i had two more at the BBQ but other than that, meh. maybe they'll go they went over well if there are any with the active stoners there. even the non-active stoners seemed to like them.
• package the rest of the cookies up to bring to the BBQ.
• decide that you're going to "quickly" blog about the experience.
• be over an hour late for the start of the memorial day BBQ.
• present cookies. refer BBQ attendees to your blog post.