Methamphetamine For The Tongue

         Apparently I have been depriving my son of a miracle substance. After being sick for a week and a half, still on antibiotics, the first food he requested was cookie butter, a product sold by Trader Joe’s, originally made from the Dutch cookie, Specuoos. How could I have been so long in the dark? We are regular TJ shoppers – it’s my favorite store, in fact. If I could find an apartment at the corner of Guadalupe and McClintock, where Trader Joe’s abuts Changing Hands Bookstore, I would move right in; all my needs could be met within a short walk. We eat Trader José’s mini tacos and Trader Ming’s pot stickers; maybe there’s been less of a promotion for Cookie Butter because there’s no Dutch equivalent to Joe.

         The main ingredient, Speculoos, does translate, as does Cookie Butter itself, the Dutch practically a homonym: koekje boter.

         Like the invention of graham cracker crust, the recipe for Cookie Butter has taken a common sweet-but-plain ingredient and changed it into something intricate and heavenly, destined to become a standard its own right. With the conversion of Speculoos, however, the intent is more sinister, the inventor more demonic than heaven-sent, like the one who first made heroine from poppies. Look at the ingredients:

         To the nearly sixty percent cookies (whose own second ingredient is “candy sugar”) the creators have added, in order of abundance, sugar, sugar syrup, two kinds of oil, and more sugar. Though it appears unhealthy but innocuous, no one who tastes it can put it aside; one spoonful equals addiction. In texture and beta-carotene-enhanced color, it resembles an actual food product, a purposeful ruse to lure unsuspecting parents into buying it. A side affect of excess beta-carotene consumption is orange-tinged skin; watch for this as a sign of CB abuse in your own family.

         Cary first ate Cookie Butter at a friend's house on apple slices, another ploy to enhance its innocent-appearing front. Its use has spread throughout all the high schools in the area. Now he has introduced the drug to my daughter and her  fiancée, in from California for Thanksgiving. Today they hopped on their airplane as new addicts. I suspect Levi will soon be setting up a home cookie butter factory in his basement alongside his miniature microbrewery.