Has Grandma Miller thrown in the towel? Say it ain't so!

Today's calendar had Grandma Miller down as the person to provide the goods. We were excited! As Grandma Miller aficionados we have always been more than happy to partake of her cookies, her shoe fly cake, her zucchini and banana breads. We knew that she was not in town but her recent thesis completing and now PhD granddaughter had purportedly brought some cookies that Grandma had given her to a New Year's party and from there they were to come to cake hour.

This doesn't look like Grandma Mailler's stuff!

Soft peanut butter cookies.

Soft chocolate chip cookies - though Toll House is still the best!

Do cookies really go out of date?

Well what to our wondering eyes should appear...a batch of Grandma's chocolate chip cookies, a banana bread?? Nope!  What had been brought in in the name of Grandma Miller were two packs of commercially baked cookie - one of which had already expired! We were devastated!  (Not really.)  We just surmised that Grandma had not yet fully recovered from shoulder surgery that she had and wanting to do well by her granddaughter she just bought her some cookies since she couldn't make them herself!  Awww! 

Chocolate chips...

...and peanut butter!

These cookies were basic and the soft kind that we don't think is necessarily anything special. But they did bring back fond memories of Grandma Miller and we hope she hasn't retired from the baking oven. 

We discussed cookies in general and how the Toll House Cookie recipe on the Nestlé remains the best. Whoever decided we needed soft and/or chewy chocolate chip cookies did not necessarily make improvements to cookiedom as the original recipe is still unbeatable.  Someone had also left behind some gluten free treats. We presume they were from a holiday gift basket.  We tried the K-Toos which emulated Oreos,  There was no gluten, no dairy and no nuts anywhere in the ingredients though there might have been a trace of eggs. There also was no flavor and no texture in these.  The texture was like sand and the chocolate was the only taste recognizable. Oreos are not going to be replaced anytime soon.

The gluten free offering!

They may look like Oreos but they are free of everything including taste! Stick with the Toll House recipe!

We had a nice conversation about gluten sensitivities and whether one could just replace wheat flour with other flours in recipes. (It was not recommended.)
We also conversed about the Iowa caucuses (snore) though they did off Michelle Bachmann. 
We explained Rick Santorum's google problem. "Honey, we can't do that without getting "santorum" all over the sheets!"  Google it! 
Maybe in a same vein we talked about fecal transplants which may be a way to resolve difficult C. difficile infections.
Lastly we inveighed on the body exhibits of Gunther von Hagens. This is the guy that controversially takes bodies and plastinates them to become grotesque exhibits. The response to his exhibitions was deemed questionable.  Check out his Wikipedia picture. He looks a little plastinated himself!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_von_Hagens.


How we started with Grandma Miller and ended up going through all these topics is anybody's guess!