Cookies Marketing Quotes

That’s the thing about the collapse of civilization, Blake. It never happens according to plan – there’s no slavering horde of zombies. No actinic flash of thermonuclear war. No Earth-shuddering asteroid. The end comes in unforeseen ways; the stock market collapses, and then the banks, and then there is no food in the supermarkets, or the communications system goes down completely and inevitably, and previously amiable co-workers find themselves wrestling over the last remaining cookie that someone brought in before all the madness began.

People do not buy fortune cookies because they taste better than every other cookie on the shelf. They buy them for the delight they deliver at the end of a meal. Marketers spend most of their time selling the cookie, when what they should be doing is finding a way to create a better fortune. Of course your job is to bake a good cookie, the very best that you can, but you must also spend time figuring out how to tell a great story.

As a leftover sixties liberal, I believe that the long arm and beady eyes of the government have no place in our bedrooms, our kitchens, or the backseats of our parked cars. But I also feel that the immediate appointment of a Special Pastry Prosecutor would do much more good than harm. We know the free market has totally failed when 89 percent of all the tart pastry, chocolate-chip cookies, and tuiles in America are far less delicious than they would be if bakers simply followed a few readily available recipes. What we need is a system of graduated fines and perhaps short jail sentences to discourage the production of totally depressing baked goods. Maybe a period of unpleasant and tedious community service could be substituted for jail time.

Cookie cutters are for baking, not branding.

There will be a cauldron of spiced hot cider, and pumpkin shortbread fingers with caramel and fudge dipping sauces as our freebies, and I've done plenty of special spooky treats. Ladies' fingers, butter cookies the shape of gnarled fingers with almond fingernails and red food coloring on the stump end. I've got meringue ghosts and cups of "graveyard pudding," a dark chocolate pudding layered with dark Oreo cookie crumbs, strewn with gummy worms, and topped with a cookie tombstone. There are chocolate tarantulas, with mini cupcake bodies and legs made out of licorice whips, sitting on spun cotton candy nests. The Pop-Tart flavors of the day are chocolate peanut butter, and pumpkin spice. The chocolate ones are in the shape of bats, and the pumpkin ones in the shape of giant candy corn with orange, yellow, and white icing. And yesterday, after finding a stash of tiny walnut-sized lady apples at the market, I made a huge batch of mini caramel apples.

The Oreo cookie invented, the Titanic sinks, Spanish flu, Prohibition, women granted the right to vote, Lindbergh flies solo across the Atlantic, penicillin invented, stock market crashes, the Depression, Amelia Earhart, the atom is split, Prohibition ends, Golden Gate Bridge is built, Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the Korean War, Disneyland, Rosa Parks, Laika the dog is shot into space, hula hoops, birth control pill invented, Bay of Pigs, Marilyn Monroe dies, JFK killed, MLK has a dream, Vietnam War, Star Trek, MLK killed, RFK killed, Woodstock, the Beatles (George, Ringo, John, and Paul) break up, Watergate, the Vietnam War ends, Nixon resigns, Earth Day, Fiddler on the Roof, Olga Korbut, Patty Hearst, Transcendental Meditation, the ERA, The Six Million Dollar Man. "Bloody hell," I said when she was done. "I know. It must be a lot to take in." "It's unfathomable. A Brit named his son Ringo Starr?" She looked pleasantly surprised: she'd thought I had no sense of humor. "Well, I think his real name was Richard Starkey.

A real house with a copper pot for making jam, and sugar cookies in a metal box hidden deep inside a dresser. A long farmhouse table, thick and homey, and cretonne curtains. She smiled. She had no idea what cretonne was, or even if she'd like it, but she liked the way the words went together: cretonne curtains. She'd have a guest room and- who knows- maybe even some guests. A well-kept little garden, hens who'd provide her with tasty boiled eggs, cats to chase after the field mice and dogs to chase after the cats. A little plot of aromatic herbs, a fireplace, sagging armchairs and books all around. White tablecloths, napkin rings unearthed at flea markets, some sort of device so she could listen to the same operas her father used to listen to, and a coal stove where she could let a rich beef-and-carrot stew simmer all morning along. A rich beef-and-carrot stew. What was she thinking. A little house like the ones that kids draw, with a door and two windows on either side. Old-fashioned, discreet, silent, overrun with Virginia creeper and climbing roses. A house with those little fire bugs on the porch, red and black insects scurrying everywhere in pairs. A warm porch where the heat of the day would linger and she could sit in the evening to watch for the return of the heron.

In the Middle Ages, sugar was a rare luxury in Europe. It was imported from the Middle East at prohibitive prices and used sparingly as a secret ingredient in delicacies and snake-oil medicines. After large sugar plantations were established in America, ever-increasing amounts of sugar began to reach Europe. The price of sugar dropped and Europe developed an insatiable sweet tooth. Entrepreneurs met this need by producing huge quantities of sweets: cakes, cookies, chocolate, candy, and sweetened beverages such as cocoa, coffee and tea. The annual sugar intake of the average Englishman rose from near zero in the early seventeenth century to around eighteen pounds in the early nineteenth century. However, growing cane and extracting its sugar was a labour-intensive business. Few people wanted to work long hours in malaria-infested sugar fields under a tropical sun. Contract labourers would have produced a commodity too expensive for mass consumption. Sensitive to market forces, and greedy for profits and economic growth, European plantation owners switched to slaves. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, about 10 million African slaves were imported to America. About 70 per cent of them worked on the sugar plantations. Labour conditions were abominable. Most slaves lived a short and miserable life, and millions more died during wars waged to capture slaves or during the long voyage from inner Africa to the shores of America. All this so that Europeans could enjoy their sweet tea and candy – and sugar barons could enjoy huge profits. The slave trade was not

Why would your decision change so much once Susan asks for a nickel apiece? Because, very simply, by asking for money, she has introduced market norms into the equation, and these have chased away the social norms that governed the case of the free cookies. More interesting, it’s clear in both cases that if you take multiple cookies, there will be fewer for the other people in your office. But if Susan offers her cookies for free, I am willing to bet that you will think about social justice, the consequences of appearing greedy, and the welfare of your coworkers. Once money is introduced into the exchange, you stop thinking about what’s socially right and wrong, and you simply want to maximize your cookie intake.

The halo effect depends not on the ingredients themselves but on the eater, or more specifically, on the degree of control the eater has over his or her food. Before the 1800s, sugar itself separated rich from poor; now it is your state of mind while enjoying the sugar that separates the haves from the have-nots. For instance, Drewnowski’s absolute favorite dessert is a slice of coconut cream pie—not just any coconut cream pie, but the signature dessert by Seattle’s resident celebrity chef Tom Douglas. (“You have to share it,” he warns. “There’s a lot of sugar and cream in it, but it’s delicious.”) So he and his dinner companion savor the slice of pie, which happens to cost $8 (or the price of about two bags of Chips Ahoy! cookies). Nice sweets with a big price tag are meant to be appreciated like that. You eat a little at a time. Sensory-specific satiety, as we saw earlier, may compel you to eat more than you need, but chances are, if you’re making at least middle-class wages, you’re not wolfing it down to ease hunger. Nor are you eating sweets all the time. Sometimes you might have fruit; sometimes you might have a cappuccino. If you’re making at least middle-class wages, then you have the freedom and the money to decide how much to eat and when to eat it. That’s how even down-market foods can sometimes be elite in the right context. Lollipops at fashion shows and Coca-Cola-infused sauces in trendy restaurants aren’t demonized because the people who consume such items in those contexts have the power to choose something else entirely if they feel like it.

Randomness, the great muse of all market players, is one tough cookie to deal with.

Bruce Horn: I thought that computers would be hugely flexible and we could be able to do everything and it would be the most mind-blowing experience ever. And instead we froze all of our thinking. We froze all the software and made it kind of industrial and mass-marketed. Computing went in the wrong direction: Computing went to the direction of commercialism and cookie-cutter. Jaron Lanier: My whole field has created shit. And it’s like we’ve thrust all of humanity into this endless life of tedium, and it’s not how it was supposed to be. The way we’ve designed the tools requires that people comply totally with an infinite number of arbitrary actions. We really have turned humanity into lab rats that are trained to run mazes. I really think on just the most fundamental level we are approaching digital technology in the wrong way. Andy van Dam: Ask yourself, what have we got today? We’ve got Microsoft Word and we’ve got PowerPoint and we’ve got Illustrator and we’ve got Photoshop. There’s more functionality and, for my taste, an easier-to-understand user interface than what we had before. But they don’t work together. They don’t play nice together. And most of the time, what you’ve got is an import/export capability, based on bitmaps: the lowest common denominator—dead bits, in effect. What I’m still looking for is a reintegration of these various components so that we can go back to the future and have that broad vision at our fingertips. I don’t see how we are going to get there, frankly. Live bits—where everything interoperates—we’ve lost that. Bruce Horn: We’re waiting for the right thing to happen to have the same type of mind-blowing experience that we were able to show the Apple people at PARC. There’s some work being done, but it’s very tough. And, yeah, I feel somewhat responsible. On the other hand, if somebody like Alan Kay couldn’t make it happen, how can I make it happen?

We're very excited about our new line of products." John squeezed his wife's hand. "We produce churned butter with sea salt imported from France. And we just started a line of yogurt with cream on top that sold very well at the farmers market." "Try the milk. It's from Ollie, my favorite cow," Jenny interrupted, placing a tray and two glasses on the coffee table. "Did you milk her yourself?" James took a cookie and dipped it in the glass of milk. "My dad says I'm not old enough. Ollie is my best friend. Would you like to meet her?" "I'd love to meet Ollie." James stood up and brushed cookie crumbs from his slacks. "Some of my best friends growing up were cows." James followed Jenny to the barn and Cassie pored over brochures and marketing plans with John and Selma. She liked the design of their butter containers: ceramic pots with black-and-white labels and a cow's hoofprint on the bottom. "And I love the idea of selling your milk in reusable glass bottles." Cassie put down her pen. "We'll have a whole fridge of milk in colored bottles. And we'll put a display of the butter pots next to the bread oven. Customers can sample fresh baked bread with churned butter.

What they didn’t own was the mindspace and shelfspace Cadbury had painstakingly built up over 180 years, especially in emerging markets like India. Cadbury had operated in India since 1948, and have a formidable presence with a 70% share of the rapidly growing chocolate market and a sales coverage that reached over one million stores. The costs and time for Kraft to attempt to replicate this would be unsustainable. Kraft can now use the Cadbury set-up to launch their own brands, and with their superior financial resources are able to add more juice than Cadbury would have been able to. In April 2011, Cadbury India launched Oreo, the Kraft-owned world’s number-one cookie brand, using Cadbury contract manufacturing expertise to source the product locally, Cadbury mindspace to brand the product under the Cadbury name and Cadbury shelfspace capabilities to achieve widespread distribution and prominent display. Mindspace and shelfspace are the valuable currencies of FMCG industries.

Real marketing is built into what you do and why you do it. It’s part of your story, something that you do organically when your business is aligned with your mission and values. Kept promises, free returns, obsession with the details, returned emails, clean tables, and attentive staff—all of this is your real marketing. Real marketing creates a deeper impact, leaves a lasting impression, and is as powerful as a smile.

Why I was successful In 2014, I was 29 years old. I was selling against companies that had been in the QuickBooks integration business for five years or more. Some competitors had millions of dollars in venture capital. Their websites were the equivalent of a five-star hotel. These competitors had large sales and marketing teams that could easily show the value of their solution. The companies had a team of programmers. I had my pajamas, a corded phone, a cookie-cutter website, and a laptop computer. I signed up about three hundred new accounts because I was the first person to pick up the phone and I spoke English. I could answer questions on what my software can automate. If there was a problem, I called the customer and we did a screenshare. You need to talk to customers on the phone and you cannot email customers to death. Many customers later told me they reached out to competitors and received no response to sales or support inquiries. These customers said they chose my company because I was responsive. Potential customers want to speak to someone in their area who understands their language. You need to connect with them. Many people signed up for Connex because they liked me over the phone. We attract many small business owners. I had similar interests and I owned a business, just like them.

When the Europeans conquered America, they opened gold and silver mines and established sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations. These mines and plantations became the mainstay of American production and export. The sugar plantations were particularly important. In the Middle Ages, sugar was a rare luxury in Europe. It was imported from the Middle East at prohibitive prices and used sparingly as a secret ingredient in delicacies and snake-oil medicines. After large sugar plantations were established in America, ever-increasing amounts of sugar began to reach Europe. The price of sugar dropped and Europe developed an insatiable sweet tooth. Entrepreneurs met this need by producing huge quantities of sweets: cakes, cookies, chocolate, candy, and sweetened beverages such as cocoa, coffee and tea. The annual sugar intake of the average Englishman rose from near zero in the early seventeenth century to around eight kilograms in the early nineteenth century. However, growing cane and extracting its sugar was a labour-intensive business. Few people wanted to work long hours in malaria-infested sugar fields under a tropical sun. Contract labourers would have produced a commodity too expensive for mass consumption. Sensitive to market forces, and greedy for profits and economic growth, European plantation owners switched to slaves.

Real marketing is built into what you do and why you do it. It’s part of your story, something that you do organically when your business is aligned with your mission and values. Kept promises, free returns, obsession with the details, returned emails, clean tables, and attentive staff—all of this is your real marketing. Real marketing creates a deeper impact, leaves a lasting impression, and is as powerful as a smile. Having

When I entered the kitchen, the lid of the cookie jar flew off and a cookie flung itself at me. Luckily I caught the cookie in my hand and seconds later discovered that ghost-propelled chocolate chip cookies were still delicious. I wondered if we could find a way to implement and market ghost-propelled cookie jars. The convenience factor was off the charts. Want a cookie? "Ghost, cookie me!" A cookie would fly towards you, dripping with malice, and you could pluck it from the air to feed your face.

Traveling cookie” data build a digital footprint of a consumers based on their logins at popular sites (for example, on airline sites or Facebook). Once the customer logs in, the cookie follows that customer wherever he or she goes on the web.

Old Spice, the seventy-five-year-old brand of men’s grooming products, had begun to lose market share in the body wash category as the market became more and more crowded. Under the direction of the digital agency Wieden+Kennedy, the brand’s manufacturer, Procter & Gamble, aimed to change how women (who were buying more than half of the body wash products) felt about their men wearing “lady-scented body wash.” The video campaign called “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” starring Isaiah Mustafa, was launched online in July 2010 during Super Bowl weekend. On the first day, the campaign received almost 6 million views. After the first week, Old Spice had 40 million views. Traffic to their website was up 300% and Facebook fan interaction was up 800%. Within six months, the campaign generated 1.4 billion impressions.

They are looking for a shortcut. Information, more time, easy payments, or something else. PayPal, lawn mowing, TripAdvisor. They want to feel more connected to the group, to belong. Instagram, live events, Startup weekend, book clubs. It works. Think Dropbox, WordPress, Amazon, FedEx. It makes their lives easier. Fruit smoothies, online groceries, Thermomix. It gives them a story to tell. A Tiffany & Co. bracelet, dinner at Jamie’s Italian restaurant, Christian Louboutin red-soled shoes. They need a solution to a problem. Online dating, personal training, gluten-free bread. It helps them get from where they are to where they want to be. Gym membership, consulting services, design. They like what you stand for. Whole Foods Markets, Method cleaning products, Patagonia outdoor wear. Their friends are doing it, too. Facebook, dinner at a new restaurant, Jägerbomb cocktails. This is why great brands become a part of the customer’s story, and customers in turn help to shape the brand’s story.

What’s the first thing you do now before you visit a new restaurant for the first time or book a hotel room online? You probably ask a friend for a recommendation or you check out the reviews online. Now more than ever, the story your customers tell about you is a big part of your story. Word of mouth is accelerated and amplified. Trust is built digitally beyond the village. Reputations are built and lost in a moment. Opinions are no longer only shared one to one; they are broadcasted one to many, through digital channels. Those opinions live on as clues to your story. The cleanliness of your hotel bathrooms is no longer a secret. Guests’ unedited photos are displayed alongside a hotel brochure’s digital glossies. TripAdvisor ratings are proudly displayed by hotels and often say more about the standards guests can expect than do other, more established star ratings systems, such as the Forbes Travel Guide‘s ratings. Once-invisible brands and family-run hotels have had their businesses turned around by the stories their customers tell about them. “With 50 million reviews and counting, [TripAdvisor] is shaking the travel industry to its core.” —Nathan Labenz It turns out that people are more likely to trust the stories other people tell about you than to trust the well-lit Photoshopped images in your brochure. Reputation is how your idea and brand story are spread. A survey conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey found that six in ten cruise customers said “they were less likely to book a cruise that received only one star.” There is no marketing more powerful than what one person says to another to recommend your brand. “Don’t waste money on expensive razors.” “Nice hotel; shame about the customer service.” In a world where online reputation can increase a hotel’s occupancy and revenue, trust has become a marketing metric. “[R]eputation has a real-world value.” —Rachel Botsman When we were looking to book a quiet, off-the-beaten-track hotel in Bali, the first place we looked wasn’t with the travel agents or booking.com. I jumped online and found that one of the area’s best-rated hotels on tripadvisor.com wasn’t a five-star resort but a modest family-run, three-star hotel that was punching well above its weight. This little fifteen-room hotel had more than 400 very positive reviews and had won a TripAdvisor Travellers Choice award. The reviews from the previous guests sealed the deal. The little hotel in Ubud was perfect. The reviews didn’t lie, and of course the place was fully booked with a steady stream of guests who knew where to look before taking a chance on a hotel room. Just a few years before, this $50-a-night hotel would have been buried amongst a slew of well-marketed five-star resorts. Today, thanks to a currency of trust, even tiny brands can thrive by doing the right thing and giving their customers a great story to tell.

No amount of marketing will change an experience.” —Brian Solis Customer experience is everything that happens when people encounter your brand. And whether it’s online or offline, you get to design it. Most people don’t put money on the table and hope that they hate the results of their choice. They actually want to fall in love with you and your brand. It’s your job to give them a reason to. The feeling your customer leaves with, as she walks out the door or clicks away from your website, is your best opportunity to differentiate your brand. Commodities are just stuff with a fixed value—until they’re not. The brands you love and talk about are not the ones that competed on price or features. They are the ones that changed how it felt to buy a cup of coffee, slip on a pair of shoes, or open a laptop in a café.

JENNA SMILED WHEN Easy walked into the bedroom, carrying what appeared to be half the refrigerator on a bowing cookie sheet. How much more sweet could he be? He glanced between her and Sara like he was unsure what to do next. Jenna pulled the covers back so the surface would be flat and patted the bed next to her. “Put it anywhere.” Easy set the makeshift tray down and rubbed a hand over his head. “I tried to think of things that would be gentle on your stomach,” he said in a low voice. “But if you want something different—” “No, this looks perfect.” Her gaze settled on a tall glass of . . . She gasped. “You made me a milk shake?” At that, Sara patted her on the knee. “Okay, I’m gonna go. Let me know if you need anything?” “Oh, uh, Shane was making you all something to eat,” Easy said. Sara smiled. “Good timing. This is making me hungry,” she said, gesturing to the tray. Jenna grabbed up the milk shake and hugged the glass against her chest. “Get your own.” Holding up her hands in surrender, Sara smiled. “All yours. Besides, Nick and Jeremy have the world’s biggest sweet tooths. There’s an endless supply of ice cream downstairs. I’m not even joking. So there’s more where that came from.” She squeezed Easy’s arm. “You know where to find me if you need me,” she said. And then they were alone. Jenna was glad. Not because having Easy here warded off her panic and fear but because she just wanted to be with him. She fished a spoon out from between two plates and took a taste of her treat. Freaking heaven. “Oh, my God,” she said, scooping another big bite. “This is so good. I can’t believe you made me a milk shake.” Even when her father had been alive, no one was really taking care of Jenna. So maybe Easy’s thoughtfulness wouldn’t have been so earthshaking to someone else, but to her, it meant everything. She peered up at him, which made her realize he was still standing. Crisscrossing her legs, she pointed at the foot of the bed. “Come sit down. Some of this has to be for you, right?” “Yeah,” Easy said. “You sure this is okay?” “It’s great, really. I can’t even remember the last time I ate, so this is like filet mignon and Maine lobster rolled into one. Seriously.” She exchanged the milk shake for the bowl of soup, and the warm, salty broth tasted every bit as good. They ate in companionable silence for a while, then he asked, “So, what are you studying in school?” “International business,” Jenna said around a spoonful of soup. “I always wanted to travel.” And, to put it more plainly, she’d always wanted to get the hell out of here. “Sounds ambitious,” Easy said. “Did you have to learn languages?” Jenna nodded. “I minored in Spanish, and I’ve taken some French, too. What I’d really like to learn is Chinese since there are so many new markets opening up there. But I’ve heard it’s really hard. Do you speak any other languages?” Wiping his mouth with a napkin, Easy nodded. “Hablo español, árabe, y Dari.” Grinning, Jenna reached for her bagel. She’d thought him hard to resist just being his usual sexy, thoughtful, protective self. If he was going to throw speaking to her in a foreign language into the mix, she’d be a goner. “What is Dari?” “One of the main languages in Afghanistan,” he said. “Oh. Guess that makes sense. Are Arabic and Dari hard to learn?” “Yeah. Where I grew up in Philly, there were a lot of Hispanic kids, so Spanish was like a second language. But coming to languages as an adult about kicked my ass. Cultural training is a big part of Special Forces training, though. We’re not out there just trying to win battles, but hearts and minds, too. . .” He frowned. “Or, we were, anyway.

Of course, Mother's day was never done. In the morning, she would go to the market for vegetables, fruits, eggs, butter, flowers. She cooked all the meals, from scratch. If you wanted to eat chicken, you bought a live bird in the market; took it to the slaughterer, cleaned the feathers, cut it open, koshered it and cooked it. That took hours. If you wanted cookies or cake, you baked them. The only ready made foods were bread and rolls. Everything else had to be prepared in the home.

I simply am going to look you in the eye and say that if the United States hopes to remain a major player among nations, facing challenges such as poverty, inadequate education, and global market competition, we’re going to need to draw deeply from our entire talent pool, not just half of it.

I just mean, even if it was done for marketing, they are remarkable sculptures. It's easy to forget how much time goes into things like designing giant fighting robots for movies. It feels cookie-cutter, but thousands of person-hours go into their creation. We love them because they're beautiful, and they're beautiful because of hard work.

She liked cookies and press cake; paczki filled with cream; tarts and candies. The more sugar the better. Fruit wasn't sweet enough for her.

front-page headline in The New York Times read “SEC Says Teenager Had After-School Hobby: Online Stock Fraud.” The fifteen-year-old New Jersey high school student collected $273,000 in eleven trades. He would first buy a block of stock in a thinly traded company, then flood Internet chat rooms with messages that, say, a $2 stock would be trading at $20 “very soon.” The text here was about as valuable as the message in a fortune cookie. Dr. EMH’s rational all-knowing investors promptly bid up the price, at which point young Mr. Lebed sold. He had opened his brokerage accounts in his father’s name. Lebed settled with the SEC, repaying $273,000 in profits plus $12,000 in interest. It’s not apparent from the stories that any of this money was used to compensate the defrauded investors, whose identity or degree of injury may in any case be impossible to determine. The father’s comment? “So they pick on a kid.

When it comes to social media, a lot of companies still don’t get it. They opt to use a “cookie cutter social media” approach instead of treating their accounts with the same respect as they would their corporate lines of credit or anything else that is critical to the business. They treat their social media as though it is something that can be mass produced and processed. This is the wrong approach to social media!

Chinese food became synonymous with The Big Bang Theory, and during the show’s final season, Warner Bros. Television marketing and publicity had fortune cookies made with cute messages inside, like, “When the elevator is broken, take the stairs,” and “If you don’t believe in goodbyes, there’s always syndication.

I meet Heidi beside the loading area and grab a crate of oatmeal raisin cookies. Their sweet, toasty aroma makes my stomach growl. They are nearly five inches in diameter and packed with plump golden raisins and fat rolled oats, the perfect balance between crispy and chewy. Every bite is perfumed with vanilla and just a touch of cinnamon, and I can see why Rick sells out at every market.

Pariva was a small village, unimportant enough that it rarely appeared on any maps of Esperia. Bordered by mountains and sea, it seemed untouched by time. The school looked the same as she remembered; so did the market and Mangia Road---a block of eating establishments that included the locally famous Belmagio bakery---and cypress and laurel and pine trees still surrounded the local square, where the villagers came out to gossip or play chess or even sing together. Had it really been forty years since she had returned? It seemed like only yesterday that she'd strolled down Pariva's narrow streets, carrying a sack of pine nuts to her parents' bakery or stopping by the docks to watch the fishing boats sail across the glittering sea. Back then, she'd been a daughter, a sister, a friend. A mere slip of a young woman. Home had been a humble two-storied house on Constanza Street, with a door as yellow as daffodils and cobblestoned stairs that led into a small courtyard in the back. Her father had kept a garden of herbs; he was always frustrated by how the mint grew wild when what he truly wanted to grow was basil. The herbs went into the bread that her parents sold at their bakery. Papa crafted the savory loaves and Mamma the sweet ones, along with almond cakes drizzled with lemon glaze, chocolate biscuits with hazelnut pralines, and her famous cinnamon cookies. The magic the Blue Fairy had grown up with was sugar shimmering on her fingertips and flour dusting her hair like snow. It was her older brother, Niccolo, coaxing their finicky oven into working again, and Mamma listening for the crackle of a golden-brown crust just before her bread sang. It was her little sister Ilaria's tongue turning green after she ate too many pistachio cakes. Most of all, magic was the smile on Mamma's, Papa's, Niccolo's, and Ilaria's faces when they brought home the bakery's leftover chocolate cake and sank their forks into a sumptuous, moist slice. After dinner, the Blue Fairy and her siblings made music together in the Blue Room. Its walls were bluer than the midsummer sky, and the windows arched like rainbows. It'd been her favorite room in the house.

Spot Shot. Its manufacturers market it for carpets, but it works on other fabrics as well. It is a combo of 2-butoxyethanol and a detergent. Spray it on, wait a bit, and dab with a paper towel. Shout, in its various formulations, is also worth shouting about. I’ve had good luck with the aerosol, the liquid, the gel, and, especially, the laundry stick.

There is no marketing more powerful than what one person says to another to recommend your brand.

Pissenlit (DANDELION SALAD) YIELD: 4 SERVINGS PISSENLIT, as the common dandelion is often called in France, is considered a great early-spring treat in our family. Gloria loves to pick the greens at the end of March and the beginning of April, especially the small white specimens hidden in the fallen leaves behind our guesthouse. This family tradition started for me with my father and my two brothers, and now my wife and daughter, Claudine, are great lovers of pissenlit salad. The leaves should be picked before the flowers start forming, while they are small, white, and tender. There is no comparison between the tender wild dandelion greens you pick yourself and the ones that are found in markets. With a small paring knife, cut about an inch below the ground to get the dandelion plant in one piece. Cut the leaves away from the root, and discard any that are damaged or darkened. Our version always includes pieces of pancetta as well as croutons, boiled eggs with soft yolks, and a dressing made of garlic, anchovies, and olive oil. 4 large eggs 5 ounces pancetta, cut into pieces about 1 inch long, ½ inch wide, and ½ inch thick (about 2 dozen) 2 cups water 6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 2 teaspoons chopped garlic 4 anchovy fillets in oil, finely chopped 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar ½ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper A piece of baguette (about 3 ounces), cut into sixteen ¼-inch slices About 8 ounces (8 cups packed) dandelion greens, washed two or three times and spun dry Lower the eggs carefully into boiling water, and boil them at a simmer for 7 minutes. Pour out the water, shake the pan to crack the shells, then fill the pan with ice, and let the eggs cool in the pan for at least 15 minutes. Peel the eggs under cold running water, and cut them into quarters. Meanwhile, put the pancetta pieces in a saucepan, and cover them with the water. Bring the water to a boil, and boil gently for 10 minutes. Drain, then put the pancetta in a saucepan with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Cook gently for 5 minutes, or until crisp and lightly browned. Transfer the pancetta along with the rendered fat to a salad bowl, and add the garlic, anchovies, vinegar, salt, pepper, and 4 tablespoons of the olive oil. Mix well. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spread the remaining 1 tablespoon oil on a cookie sheet, press the slices of bread into the oil, and then turn them over, so they are oiled on the second side. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until nicely browned. At serving time, add the greens to the salad bowl, and toss them with the dressing. Divide among four plates, and top with the bread and quartered eggs. Serve.

Late one day on her way home from the market, she took a detour to the train station, hoping to find customers for some unsold cookies. Workers were sweeping up the station’s plaza. A couple of men walked by, pulling a heavy wooden cart. Mrs. Song looked to see what they were transporting. It was a heap of bodies, maybe six of them, people who had died at the station overnight. A few bony limbs flopped out of the cart. A head lolled as the cart jostled over the pavement. Mrs. Song stared; the head belonged to a man about forty years old. His eyes blinked faintly, Not quite dead yet, but close enough to be carted away.

She hadn't wanted to make plain cinnamon cookies. She'd wanted to blend in ginger and try something fun like rosewater. She'd thought about going to the market and buying fresh spring vegetables, then making a red wine risotto with the crunchy, delicious vegetables served with a perfect roasted chicken stuffed with garlic and spices.

The quality of the food on a mountain climb is usually a direct function of availability and the willingness of someone to lug it up there for you. Base Camp on Everest, for example, was a busy place and a big market for provisioners. As a result, we enjoyed eggs every morning. But the higher you go and the farther away from civilization you are, the more practical and less palatable the fare becomes. By the time you get really high (and have just about stopped caring about food altogether), all that you generally consume are simple carbohydrates and the occasional swallow of soup with cookies or crackers.

The fortune, not the cookie, is what people really care about.

There is a cookie trail of all my interests lodged in some digital sphere which will one day consolidate the collected data of six billion souls and vomit out—I don’t know—personalized infomercials for deodorant and car wax.