Thank you all for your input, Double-Ds and all.
This question arose after I saw the funny cartoon(above) and, the next day, while in search of a snack found myself looking for Oreos. (Don't try to tell me that visual advertising doesn't work!)
The odd thing to me was, once I had returned to my desk, I opened the package and opened the first Oreo, scraped off the icing with my lower teeth.....and immediately recognized that I was in the middle of some ancient routine I had long forgotten.
I don't think I have eaten any Oreos in the past 15 or 20 years.
But, obviously I had, sometime in the past, developed a routine, a ritual, for eating them--twist, scrape, munch, next cookie; twist, scrape, MUNCH, next cookie. Your brain never forgets anything.
One other thing I remembered as I experimented with dunking the last two. Your fingers (clean, please) do need to be just under the surface of the liquid, in this case, hot tea, and there is a point at which your fingers tell you that you've reached the saturation point. There is the sensation of the cookie weakening. ----That's when the race to your big yap begins.
~~
One more thing and then I have to go pack for a journey.
Oreos are not as good as they once seemed. They have a cardboardy feeling to them and the chocolate receptors in my brain (very highly skilled) were not impressed; here are the scores : Swiss 7, Mexican 6, Dutch 6, German 5 and the representative from Pennsylvania -4.
Joe(The Swiss judge was an Irishman)Nation
@Joe Nation,
I've bought them recently, but quite honestly I haven't eaten them recently. Its for the kids. I'm not a huge cookie person any more so I can't tell you whether the taste has changed or not.
Could you also be your tastes have changed?
@Joe Nation,
I like going to the cookie factory - I can buy just the cookie part - skip the innards entirely.
@Linkat,
That would be hard to tell, given the time elapsed between servings, but I can tell you that the experience didn't seem to be as satisfying.
Maybe it was the tea, instead of using milk.
~
Maybe it was because I wasn't on my back porch, fending off the dog while enjoying my afternoon snack.
Joe(Here! Take this half..<woof>)Nation
We do have to confront dismal reality here. As we age, and god knows a lot of us here have, we lose taste buds on the sides and roof of our mouth, and the remaining taste buds, mostly on our tongues, become less sensitive. And our sense of smell diminishes as well, and that is a large component of taste. Maybe Oreos haven't changed, maybe we have.
Maybe the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our cookies but in ourselves.Maybe we are just less able to still savor Oreos' profound goodness. Maybe that's why they may still be a kid favorite. Ah, mortality. But I still prefer sugar cookies.
@MontereyJack,
Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
Joe(even though you're right.)Nation
@MontereyJack,
His taste buds are not getting less sensitive - they are more refined.
@Linkat,
yeah.
What he said.
I have had too many homemade truffles to be content with manufactured chocolate disks.
Joe(tsk)Nation
In addition to taste buds some of you may be suffering from sentimentality.
Perhaps one reason the Oreo seemed so splendid when younger was the entire set up. It was 2 cookies at once along with the filling. And when cousin Irene..the older, would give me and her grandchildren each 4 cookies it was like getting 8 cookies .
(and this Linkat is where first began devising ways to stack the fillings from 8 cookies. When my cousin Irene...the younger, decided she needed to diet(she was 15 or 16 at the time), I would talk her into handing over the fillings from her 4 cookies. To stack the fillings, press firmly and evenly across the top, there's air in that there filling and it sinks like a cheap pillow).
I never completely gave up Oreos over the years so if there was a taste change I didn't particularly notice.
Never adjusted to the weirdo Oreos...mint, orange or peanut butter or even oddly the double stuff. Didn't like the reduced fat or any other than the standard I have known and loved for years.
Is it legal to dunk chocolate covered Oreos and white chocolate covered Oreos in milk or hot tea? Something tells me that it's a hangable offense.
@Joe Nation,
Ummmm...is 2012 the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812...or is it the 300th?
In my book, there are only three kinds of people in this world--those good at math and those who ain't so good.
@Joe Nation,
Oh...about the Oreo questions
