A Contribution to 2011: The Year of Idaho Food
The local and the packaged compared. Photo by Janie Burns
I like to think that I have made peace with my food. When I have a choice, I try to eat from our farm and garden first, then from my friends and neighbors, then from Idaho or the northwest, and then, reluctantly, from who knows where. This has worked pretty well until I encountered three simple words: Girl Scout cookies.
After all, who can resist irrepressible and earnest girls out to conquer the world? Who should eat the ingredients listed on the side of the Thin Mint box?
So I got to thinking, “Could I make these at home?” “Could I make them from local ingredients?”
A quick glance at the 60 words in the ingredients list suggested I couldn’t. None of them were on my shelf, at least in the adjective-laden, parentheses-heavy form on the box. I was fresh out of things like “leavening (baking soda, monocalcium phosphate)”, “soy lecithin”, and that perennial favorite “artificial flavor”.
Knowing that my mother’s Joy of Cooking probably didn’t have a thin mint recipe, I turned to my new favorite cookbook—the internet. I did a quick Google search of “thin mint recipes” and found, to my astonishment, numerous knock-offs, including some creative liquid ones requiring a trip to the liquor store.
The cookie ingredients were simple: butter, sugar, egg, flour, cocoa powder, salt, and mint extract. The frosting was chocolate and butter. I knew I could make these cookies—but how could I make them as local as possible?
The butter was from Cloverleaf Dairy in Buhl; the sugar from Amalgamated Sugar in Nampa; the flour (I substituted 100% freshly-ground whole wheat) from Canyon Bounty Farm in Nampa; and the eggs from our hens. The mint oil, too, was a surprising local product. The surprise was not that the Treasure Valley grows mint, but that some of the precious oil had been saved by a farmer. Virtually all of it leaves the state to flavor gum, and to be used in a host of other culinary products including, I suspect, Girl Scout cookies.
My chocolate wafers were not very round and the icing was not uniform at all, but they are pretty darn good. In fact, really good and the few people with whom I have shared them are asking for more. Now, what to do with those boxes of mediocre cookies. And what to tell those earnest young scouts….
The recipe can be found at: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Thin-Mint-Cookies/Detail.aspx
And here’s a link to a story on improving the environmental impact of Girl Scout Cookies.
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Janie Burns is a farmer, local food advocate and co-founder of 2011: The Year of Idaho Food. She is also a member of the TVFC steering committee and owner of Meadowlark Farm in Nampa, ID.
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