"I'm sorry I don't have anything good for you guys to eat," Mom apologized as she picked up her purse and then kissed each of her kids on the head. "But there's stuff to make cookies if you want to do that."
"Yes, yes!" Gale, Phillip, and Linda all exclaimed, as their cousin Kathy, who was to be their babysitter that afternoon, smiled.
"Sure, we'll make some cookies while your gone, Aunt Eleanor. Is there any particular kind I should make?"
"Whatever you guys want," Mom answered with a grin. "I think there are some chocolate chips on the shelf, and they have a recipe on the back of them. Otherwise you can look up recipes in the cookbook."
Once Mom left Kathy gathered the kids around her to decide what kind of cookies to make. Keith, the oldest brother, was watching Wallace and Ladmo in the family room, and he said he didn't care. Linda, the youngest sister, was really too little to care either. She just sucked her thumb, held onto her soft blankie, and smiled. Gale and Phillip were excited, though. They loved cookies and they loved Kathy, and they were sure this was going to be a fun afternoon.
In the end they all decided chocolate chip cookies sounded best. So Kathy got down the big, glass mixing bowl, the kids helped her find the flour, sugar, baking soda, and vanilla on the shelf, and she got eggs and oleo (that's what they used to call margarine back in those days) out of the refrigerator. Then they started to mix up the cookies.
It was a lot of fun. Creaming sugar into cold oleo takes a lot of arm muscles, and Kathy let Gale and Phillip each work on the dough for a little while. When it was finally all smooshed together she cracked the eggs and let the kids beat them in, and the vanilla, too. When it came time to sift in the flour Kathy thought she ought to do that, herself. Sifting flour into a bowl without getting it all over the table was an art, and the little kids hadn't quite acquired that ability yet.
Phillip kept sticking his little fingers into the dough, "To test it," he said. Kathy just laughed, but Gale scolded him. After all, she was his big sister by two years, and Mom had always told them eating raw flour would give them worms. Kathy didn't seem too worried about it, though. She even tested a tiny bit once all the flour was worked in, so then Gale decided she'd better give it a try, too. It was darn good! There was something sugary and sweet and light and fresh tasting about that dough, better than anything she had ever tasted before.
Kathy opened the bag of chocolate chips and poured them into the bowl, then let Gale and Phillip, and even little Linda, stir in the chips. Then, of course, they had to test the dough again to see how that tasted. It was even better with the chocolate! Keith came in the room about then, and decided he should check it out, so Kathy gave him the big mixing spoon to lick.
then Kathy got Mom's cookie sheets out of the cupboard, greased them with the paper off the oleo, and started to drop spoonfuls of dough onto the sheets. She quickly stopped when she glanced over at little Linda, who was sitting in her highchair next to the table. Linda was fast asleep. All of the excitement of making cookies must have worn her out. Kathy picked her up and carried her into the living room. With one hand she spread Linda's soft blanket out on the floor, then she carefully laid the sleeping toddler down, tucked the blankie around her shoulders, then went back into the kitchen.
Quite a sight met her eyes. Keith still had the big mixing spoon, but he wasn't just licking it off. He was using it to scoop out cookie dough to eat. Gale and Phillip both had the smaller spoons Kathy had been using to put the dough on the cookie sheets. They were also helping themselves to raw cookie dough. All all of them had huge smiles on their faces.
"All right, guys," Kathy laughed as she walked into the room. "Don't you think we should bake the cookies first?"
"Actually," Keith said, "I think it tastes better like this."
"Me too, me too," Gale and Phillip chimed in. "Why do we have to bake the cookies? Why can't we just eat them like this?"
Kathy laughed, but when she thought about it she really didn't have a good reason why they couldn't just eat the dough. Either way, they were eating chocolate chip cookies. So in the end, they all sat down around the table and enjoyed eating that delicious cookie dough. It probably would have been OK, too, if they had just known when to stop. Eating a few cookies won't hurt anybody, but eating a whole batch might. And eating a whole bowl of cookie dough certainly will.
By the time Mom got home from her meeting the bowl was empty, the kitchen was cleaned (because Kathy was a good babysitter and she always left the house cleaner than she found it,) and she and the kids were sitting in the family room, watching TV, with really sick stomachs. In fact, Gale's stomach felt so queasy she thought she would never feel better again, and she swore she would never eat another bite of cookie dough as long as she lived. Funny, although the memory of that sick stomach has lasted over 50 years, the resolve to never eat cookie dough dissolved about the next time Mom made chocolate chip cookies.
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