what you can have

So confession? I took even more pictures in Colorado than I let on Wednesday. In fact, there were something like 350. 350 photos, people. I didn’t post them all because, partly, that would take a lot of time for me and, also, because that would be a lot to ask of you. 350 pictures is a lot of pictures.

Anyway, I was going through some of those extras last night, scrolling through the hour-to-hour chronicles of our trip in a cable car up Pikes Peak, with Michele pointing her camera at the window and crisp, cold air sweeping in against our faces, and can I just say that looking at them created an ache—like a physical ache—deep in my gut, the kind you get when you’re really far from your family or when you haven’t seen your best friend for a long time. Oh, Colorado. I miss you.

So one more picture?

Ah. Thank you for indulging me.

We both know there are a lot of things about Colorado I can’t take with me: the sunshine (hello, muggy, hazy, it’s-certainly-fall Chicago!), the altitude, the giant mountains and the beautiful little towns. None of the restaurants I loved are in commuting distance, and that means Bistro Vendome and I are sadly separated.

But I am happy to tell you there is at least one thing I managed to sneak away with, something I’ve been holding tightly since Sunday afternoon, bringing it on the plane with us Monday and into work Tuesday, even hiding the bit that’s left to make it last longer. I know you won’t be even a little surprised when I tell you what it is.

I’m talking about cookies.

These almond lace cookies certainly aren’t Colorado, and Colorado isn’t the only place you can find them—you can buy them online and, I’m told, in some Whole Foods stores [update: not yet but soon on Whole Foods!]. But they came to me in Colorado, by way of Kendall of The Ink, a blog you may have noticed featured in the sidebar at the left, and they were sort of a mood-booster in their own right, even in that always-beautiful state, on a day when we missed our massages because the GPS system sent us to Littleton when I punched in Westminster. (I swear I put Westminster! Twice!)

My friends and I came back to the hotel room, now with a Sunday afternoon wide-open with free time, knowing we could possibly still be charged for the massages we’d booked, trying to think what, after Golden and Rocky Mountain National Park and the Air Force Academy and Colorado Springs and the Broadmoor Resort we could possibly have left to fit in on this one last day of vacation, and we opened the Minnie Beasley’s cookie packages.

I wish I’d written our first reactions down because they were so perfect—I know I said, These are amazing!, and someone corrected me with, Beyond amazing! There were comparisons to candy—like a toffee, my dad said when I gave him some Monday as my parents drove us home from the airport. They’re super-duper sweet, crisp, hand-rolled into long and slender tubes, unlike the the more typical almond lace rounds you may be familiar with. And, how crazy is it that they were voted #1 cookie at the New York Fancy Food Show in 2008?

We got to try both gluten-free versions, regular and covered in chocolate, and, take it from someone who has had gluten-free cupcakes and tasted a distinct difference, you’d never know something was missing with these.

They’re not Colorado, but you won’t need a plane ticket to get some, and, even heartache aside, that is good news indeed.

Minnie Beasley’s Cookies
http://minniebeasleys.com/