Tasting is Believing

I've always felt that the best way to advertise is to let people get a taste, smell, look or listen- in other words a sample of what you do.

I proved my own adage this past weekend.

For three out of the five years we've been going up to Napa to help our good friends Ken and Susie Pope at the cedargablesinn host the historic inn tour, we've enjoyed a sampling of some dessert by anniethebaker. A peanut butter parfait. They were good. Delicious, in fact. But every year I kept hearing about her cookies. They are for people who love the dough more than the cookie, she said. I'm one of those people. But still, I'd never tasted one of her cookies, the cookies that she'd painstakingly developed by scientific experimentation, often testing each cookie with a thermometer to make sure it was thoroughly done, and still tasted like it wasn't, quite.

Yada, yada. It was all talk to me. I'm sure they were good, I mean most every cookie I'd ever tried was good, you know? And all the dough, too.

We stayed up ater the tour, our aching feet longing to have a rest, standing in the kitchen to talk to Annie, who is one of the most energetic and funny conversationalists I've ever met. She told us how she left accounting to pursue her dream. To bake cookies, and how her parents were and still are a little 'nnnhhh'...about it.

I was fascinated by her as a person. She'd grown up in the midwest. We understood each other. Still, I'd never tasted a cookie of hers. Everyone left. Annie went home. I passed by a table in the foyer with rounded mounds that someone said were Annie's cookies. I tried a chocolate one. OOOOHHHH! Now I know what she meant. It tasted like cookie dough (forbidden treat) but it was a fully cooked cookie. I had another, a white one with huge milk cocolate chunks. Really full, but tasting more, I finally tried the rainbow sprinkle one,  the favorite of all the kids.

I was hooked, and am now a believer.