I never realized how much of the world rides on the shoulders of the Chocolate chip. We weren’t raised in a “home cooking” environment. We were a “modern,” post war family. We worshiped at the altar of Swanson’s TV dinners, complete with “apple crisp and real mashed potatoes.” For variety, there was always Spagettios or Chef Boyardee in a can. Convenience and ease took precedence over taste and texture. We were into “F’s”-- as in Frozen and Fast. Don’t even bring up the words “Natural” or “Organic.” Back then only “Commies” talked of those things. We were ‘Mericans--and our meals came packaged in aluminum or tin.

Hard to believe what junk we ate. Yet, we grew up to be the tallest, healthiest generation the world had ever seen.

It’s common knowledge that I married well above my station. The Goobs is a woman of many talents and dimensions. When we met in a New York restaurant, I wasn’t aware of the role that meals would play in our lives. I knew she could cook. What I didn’t know was that she could bake. What I really didn’t know was the importance of baking in the world--specifically baking Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I watched this phenomenon develop as the kids were growing up. It began with a wonderful baby sitter named Tracy. She was from Calistoga and could bake up a storm. In the early days back in St. Helena, batter and flour dust filled our kitchen on Allyn Ave. Tracy was always baking Christmas cookies for some benefit, or birthday cookies--whatever. It was cute watching the kids wield a rolling pin and kneading dough. Tracy taught all three kids to bake before they were 7 years old. It wasn’t uncommon to see a group of tykes, in the kitchen laying Crisco to a cookie sheet or carrying trays of hot cookies from the oven to the kitchen table.

Cookie cutters abounded and we had no end of shapes from rocking horses to Christmas Bells, to gingerbread men. At some point, our neighbor, Rea, gave the Goobs her recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies. I could share it with you--but then I’d have to kill you.

Or I could do what all the great cooks do when asked for their special recipe--give it to you and just leave one little itty, bitty thing out. That’s why you hear so many women saying, “Gosh, I followed your directions, but they just don’t taste the same as yours do.”

Home cooks are a different breed.

Soon the Cub Scouts, Brownies, and Boy Scouts were in our kitchen baking cookies. From dens and packs the Goobs was leading, to little leaguers she coached--they all ended up in the kitchen sifting flour.

Word spread. After a while the Goobs was having me deliver cookies to the teachers at school, the basketball coach, the tennis team, the parents’ clubs she chaired--you name it. Suddenly, her cookies were famous and in demand everywhere.

(I especially liked her offer to J.J.’s offensive line:

“If J.J. finishes the game with no mud on his pants--cookies for everybody.” Every Monday after Friday night’s game those big linemen would be hogging down in our kitchen--except after the Kelsyville game. When those cookies weren’t there on Monday—well, let’s just say that was the last time she ever had to wash JJ’s white football pants after a game).

As the years passed, teens flocked to our kitchen. There were always kids coming and going--always cookies being devoured.

Then an awful truth was pointed out. “Mom, no one believes anyone makes cookies anymore,”. Now of course, that was a teen exaggeration.

But it was an inadvertent comment on one of the side effects of the breakdown in the nuclear family. What they were saying was that with so many working parents, and broken homes--that kids have to fend for themselves--make their own meals—often eat alone—that cookies rarely entered the equation.

It didn’t mean her friends weren’t loved, well cared for or well fed. They were. It’s just that, well who’d a ever thunk that a silly chocolate chip could carry such meaning to a kid?

Maybe it’s a guy thing. I had thought that making dough so my kids could go to college showed the depth of my love. Dough, as a measure of love, was important to kids. I just had to learn which kind. Goobs knew it all along.