you can freeze cookies?

I fix a lot of computers, and sometimes, to express their gratitude for my immense technological prowess, my clients bring me baked goods, specifically cookies.

This fills me with both joy and despair.

Joy, because I like cookies. I really, really like cookies.

Like, how much do I like cookies? Imagine the most beautiful woman in the world, a woman of such mind-boggling beauty as to bewitch kings and inspire poets to new heights, to enslave the mind of any man who gazes upon her. Now imagine that she is naked, and she walks into my room holding a plate full of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies topped with peanut M&Ms.

My reaction would be: “Oh. My. God. Cookies!”

However, receiving cookies also fills me with despair, because I have gone to vast length to improve my self-discipline (losing 135 pounds in the process), and cookies are an enormous challenge to that self-control. Like, I have to give away most of the cookies, immediately, because otherwise I will eat them all. The sensible thing, of course, would be store them, and eat them slowly in small amounts over a long period of time, but you can’t do that, because cookies get stale rather quickly. Alas, alas.

This came up today when a satisfied client gave me a three-pound bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies. I thanked her profusely for the generous gift, but mentioned that I would have to give most of them away, otherwise I would eat them in their awesome deliciousness all at once.

She frowned in puzzlement, and said, “Why don’t you just freeze them?”

The world stopped.

I stared at her.

“You mean,”I whispered, awestruck, “you mean you can…freeze cookies?”

How did I never realize this before? You can freeze bread, right? I freeze bread all the time. And cookies are basically bread, with additional sugar and fat added. Blind fool! Why have I never before realized this simple yet profound truth?

All this flashed through my mind in an instant.

“Oh, sure,” she said, “I do it all the time, and they actually taste pretty good frozen, you know.”

She was right. Oh, she was right.

Frozen cookies are delicious. And I have enough frozen cookies to eat one a day for months.

-JM