Monday, May 16, 2005
The Cookie Election
Thirteen years ago today apparently was the day pundits announced that Clinton, Perot and Bush41 were in a dead heat for the 1992 election. Which reminded me of the poll I conducted as a result of the Great Cookie Wars.
Remember Mrs Clinton's remarks about having accomplished so much because she hadn't been "stuck in the kitchen"? And that Family Circle then printed Mrs Bush's and Mrs Clinton's supposedly favorite chocolate chip recipes, I guess in an attempt to level the housewife playing field? And that, not to be out-housewifed, Mrs Perot's weighed in with her favorite cookie recipe, a white flour cookie with lemon frosting? My thought was that it could be amusing to taste all three recipes and see if my cookie choices had any relationship to my feelings for the bakers' husbands.
Mrs Bush's was a scrumptious classic full-bodied chocolate chip cookie. Mrs Clinton's was a nice variation using less butter and adding oatmeal. Mrs Perot's lemon-iced white cookie was tasty and light. All three were delicious. So I got the bright idea of baking several batches of all three cookies and asking everyone who came into our office to taste all three cookies and pick a favorite, of course without knowing which cookie belonged to which prospective first lady. I was curious about whether the results would have any relationship to the real election outcome.
I don't remember actual numbers, but the percentages of voting-for-people results were identical to the voting-for-cookies results. No joke! So I called a friend at CNN, hoping she would send a crew and let me share my unscientific fun poll with the nation, but it was too late (although she said if she'd known about it in advance, she definitely would have used it). One of my favorite things was that the cookie voters said the lemon cookies were actually their favorite but they felt they should vote for a more traditional cookie. In the end, the clear and decisive results were the same between the tasters and the voters. Maybe our decision-making isn't as sophisticated and clever as we think it is. Or maybe the way to men's and women's hearts and minds really IS through their taste buds.
Remember Mrs Clinton's remarks about having accomplished so much because she hadn't been "stuck in the kitchen"? And that Family Circle then printed Mrs Bush's and Mrs Clinton's supposedly favorite chocolate chip recipes, I guess in an attempt to level the housewife playing field? And that, not to be out-housewifed, Mrs Perot's weighed in with her favorite cookie recipe, a white flour cookie with lemon frosting? My thought was that it could be amusing to taste all three recipes and see if my cookie choices had any relationship to my feelings for the bakers' husbands.
Mrs Bush's was a scrumptious classic full-bodied chocolate chip cookie. Mrs Clinton's was a nice variation using less butter and adding oatmeal. Mrs Perot's lemon-iced white cookie was tasty and light. All three were delicious. So I got the bright idea of baking several batches of all three cookies and asking everyone who came into our office to taste all three cookies and pick a favorite, of course without knowing which cookie belonged to which prospective first lady. I was curious about whether the results would have any relationship to the real election outcome.
I don't remember actual numbers, but the percentages of voting-for-people results were identical to the voting-for-cookies results. No joke! So I called a friend at CNN, hoping she would send a crew and let me share my unscientific fun poll with the nation, but it was too late (although she said if she'd known about it in advance, she definitely would have used it). One of my favorite things was that the cookie voters said the lemon cookies were actually their favorite but they felt they should vote for a more traditional cookie. In the end, the clear and decisive results were the same between the tasters and the voters. Maybe our decision-making isn't as sophisticated and clever as we think it is. Or maybe the way to men's and women's hearts and minds really IS through their taste buds.
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