Photo: Scorpions
and Centaurs/Flickr
Some people meditate on mountaintops to achieve enlightenment, but not Leon Neyfakh. He discovered a (much more delicious) shortcut. You see, he learned all about the human condition by eating every variety of Pepperidge Farm Cookie:
A few months ago, a friend said to me, with disconcerting severity, “There’s something perverse about enjoying such a boring cookie.” I was moved to wonder: Is there something perverse about me? What kind of person am I, and how am I different from people who prefer, say, Veronas or Genevas?
It was then that I decided to sample every cookie in the Pepperidge Farm family and figure out what was what. I would try to understand what made each cookie special and seductive—and what it might mean to be drawn to one of them more than another.
Read more about the history of the Pepperidge Farm Cookies, and the secret to their success (in one word "moms") over at Slate: Link
And what's so boring about those cookies? I mean- with the exception of 'monster cookies' (those nightmares of oatmeal, M&M's, raisins and who-knows-what-else), what cookie isn't 'boring' if you apply Leon's friend's apparent criteria.