Jennie points out a great book, "A Baker's Field Guide to Christmas Cookies". This sounds like a fabulous idea.
I often find myself frozen like deer in the headlights, unable to decide at the Christmas treat table which cookies I should take. I am stuck attempting to remember if I like lebkuchen or is it really a pfeffernuse. No more, I can whip out my handy cookie guide and immediately discover which cookies I should be eating.
A field guide might also promote being able to track a "life list" of cookies I have eaten and where I was when I ate that cookie first.
A new vocation is born, "cookie-ing". I am a "cookie-er." To be a real cookie-er one must learn about where to find the cookies, the sound each type of cookie makes when bitten, geographic differnces in cookies, etc.. This is the beginning of the next big thing.
Cookie-ing -- The act of seeking out and observing cookies in their native habitat.
Cookie-er -- One who seeks out and observes cookies in their native habitat and generally understand migration patterns of cookies.
Perhaps one should form an "American Cookie-ing Assocation" to promote this past time, with rules on how the life list of cookies can be properly recorded.
Members who submit lifelist and annual list totals submitted to the American Cookie-ing Association for publication in the annual ACA List Report must observe the ACA Recording Rules. A cookie included in totals submitted for ACA lists must have been encountered in accordance with the following ACA Recording Rules:
- The cookie must have been within the prescribed area and time period when encountered.
- The cookie must have been a species currently accepted by the ACA Checklist Committee for lists within its area, by the I.C.A. Checklist for lists outside the ACA area and within the I.C.A. area.
- The cookie must have been alive, wild, and unrestrained when encountered.
- Diagnostic field marks for the cookie, sufficient to identify to species, must have been seen and/or heard and/or tasted and documented by the recorder at the time of the encounter.
- The cookie must have been encountered under conditions that conform to the ACA Code of Ethics.
