I love cookies. I do. In this world of healthy-eating, weight-losing, ab-firming, strengthen-your-inner-core views, I feel like a drunk stumbling into an AA meeting, muttering incoherently to themselves. To admit that you adore eating something as sinfully simple and sweet as cookie, which is the antithesis of healthy, organic, nutritious - you feel like you're steeping out on that limb alone. The only thing that's worse, is shopping for premade cookies.

What makes it more frustrating: my hubby loves store-bought cookies. Yep, he is the Oreo King. As long as it's not minty, he'll eat it. Which leaves me, as the primary shopper (and not a big fan of Oreos anyway), the one that gets to buy them. This typically isn't a problem - I look at the price of Oreos, have a good chuckle, and reason that until they go on sale, he ain't getting any. Oreo's, I mean. What were you thinking?

This week, Dominicks has them on sale, I can get the mini oreos in the 8 oz. snack pack for $.50 a pack. Now, I get to be the crazy lady in the grocery store with a dozen bags of Oreos in her cart, maybe more (I've got loads of coupons). When kids with their parents see what I'm buying, inevitably I hear - "but Mom, why can't we get some Oreos?" This is swiftly followed by a dirty look from the mom, whose probably thinking something along the lines of "How can you let your kid(s) eat that junk?" When, in fact, I am offering them to a grown man.

Personally, I prefer the soft cookie. You know - the kind that if you bought at the store you'd spend as much on as a pound of meat. Or the kind that you have to spend time in the kitchen to make: atl east an hour or two, that come out of the oven just oozing with chocolaty goodness. Or the sweet tang of cinnamon/ginger/nutmeg/citrus fills the air. The kidd of cookies I grew up on. As you can tell, I had a stay-at-home mom, where hubby's mom worked - therefor: him = Oreos. Me = homemade cookies.

With all the refrigerated cookie dough, it's easy to have an almost homemade cookie, without all that time-consuming stuff, like actually making the dough and dropping by rounded spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. But, I resent paying for work that I am more than capable of doing myself. I can have several kinds of cookies for the price of one tube of cookie dough. In fact, I have never bought refrigerated cookie dough - I object to it on principal. But, I make a double batch of dough, and pop half into the fridge for my next cookie craving, but I digress...

So far, I haven't met a soft cookie I didn't like. My thighs will attest to that. Loudly, in fact, don't let them get started, I don't want my butt to join in.

And I love variety. I have a cabinet full of extract flavors from vanilla and almond to coconut and chocolate, I even found coffee extract. Delish! There is nothing like building a cookie from scratch. From Oatmeal Island Cookies to White Chocolate Pumpkin Cookies to a simple Chocolate Chip Cookie, I can't fathom why Oreo's are the way the cookie crumbles....

Tell me - how do your cookies crumble? What is your favorite, your family's favorite, the one cookie you simply could not live without?