By Dawn Phelps
Most grandmas probably have a cookie jar, but I have a special “Oreo Jar” that I had for many years before I was a grandma. During the years while I lived at Thornberry Acres near Miltonvale before my first husband died, many little hands reached into that jar and pulled out those delicious dark chocolate cookies with the yummy white icing in the middle!
And during some of the years at Thornberry Acres, “The Oreo Jar” became a part of a hide-and-seek game between me and my youngest daughter Misty. I had started the Oreo Jar because I enjoyed having an occasional cookie, but my youngest daughter Misty really liked Oreos.
Then a foreign exchange student named Victoria from Spain came to live with us for a school year. And Victoria really liked Oreos too, so she and Misty could empty the Oreos Jar in an evening!
That’s when the “hiding-the-Oreos” game began. At first, I moved the Oreos around in the kitchen—different shelves, the bread box, high in shelves, or low in shelves. But Misty always found them.
Then I moved them to the filing cabinet, the closet, or sometimes on the steps that went upstairs! And those “moving” Oreos gave us lots of laughs and memories.
The years moved swiftly along, and our girls grew up and were married. Then the grandchildren came along. And they really like Oreos too. So, when they came to our house, little hands and not-so-little hands reached into the Oreo Jar—even the older grandchildren really like Oreos too.
A couple of my favorite “Oreo Memories” involved Will Thomas, our youngest grandson when he was about three years old. For about a year, after my present husband Tom and I were married, we took care of Will every Tuesday while his mother Misty was in school.
Toward evening on those days, either Tom or I would drive Will half-way toward his home in Manhattan to meet his mother. Will liked to take a snack bag of cookies home with him.
One day I fixed Will a bag of 8 Oreos—2 for him and 2 for each of his 3 siblings. Will wanted to hold onto the bag that evening while Tom drove him to meet his mother. Due to difficulties with keys getting locked into Tom’s car when Misty and Tom met, for a while, Will and the Oreos were forgotten.
Then when Will and his mother were finally on their way home toward Manhattan, Will proudly presented a total of 3 Oreos to his mother for his 3 siblings.
Later that day I talked to Misty by phone. I asked her if the other kids got their Oreos and she said yes, there were three. Then we realized that Will had “done the math”—he had eaten 5 Oreos, but he had left one each for his sisters and brother.
Another day I sent a bag of Oreos home with Will. That day I drove him to meet his mom. He announced that he planned to give some of the cookies to his mother.
As we rode along, I watched Will in the rearview mirror as he ate the icing out of middles of all the cookies. He carefully put some of the chocolate cookies back together in the baggie “for his mom,” but only after all the icing was licked clean!
When I saw what he had done, I encouraged him to go ahead and eat the chocolate parts too, telling him his mother would not be disappointed since she did not know he was bringing Oreos home to her anyway. Will had such good intentions, but he just could not resist that yummy icing—a fun Oreo memory!
Oreos are difficult for many of us to resist. They have been around since 1912 when they were first baked on Oreo Way, a street in New York City in the first Nabisco factory. Originally, dark chocolate and lemon meringue-flavored Oreos were baked, but the lemon ones were eventually discontinued, and the chocolate ones have persisted. Here are a few more Oreo facts.
*It takes 120 minutes to make and bake an Oreo cookie.
*In addition to the original dark chocolate flavor, there are now Double Stuf Oreos, mint, thin ones, Mega Stuf, golden, peanut butter, and more.
*Oreos are used in many ways—to eat with milk, crushed to make a crust, in ice cream, and other ways.
*Factories in 18 countries bake about 40 billion Oreos cookies each year!
*50% of people pull or twist them apart before eating them, and more women twist them off than men.
And there you have a little information about Oreo cookies and a few of my special Oreo memories!
