Cookie Review #2
Negociant. Tabor Bread. Courier Coffee. Swedish Hill.
Tabor Bread, Buckwheat Chocolate Chip Cookie
The ceramic plate, while most common, is probably the worst method of delivery for a cookie. Flat, dry, and weighted more heavily in the middle, the buckwheat chocolate chip cookie, or any other kind, is likely to go flying in an inappropriate direction while making the short trek from pastry counter to table. The walk can be dangerous in a busy cafe like Tabor Bread, especially on the weekends. Especially with the company I keep. On this day, the cookie went where you by now expect it to: the floor. I ate it anyway. The company was forgiving if also in a nervous, self-excusing manner. It was better than I remembered and no better than anyone will try to tell you it is.
Swedish Hill, West Sixth location in Austin, TX, Oatmeal Cookie
It’s too cold for my shape to exist any longer. One day I noticed that I had begun to narrate events that were a mix of what was currently transpiring with events that hadn’t happened from an imagined future in the past tense. I wanted to pick up the phone and call—not text—people I knew. But there were rules which made this impossible or at least not good. All this and more contributed to a general feeling of personal entrapment that so much as a descriptive whiff of another life, such as consuming more than 10 pages of Speedboat in one sitting, wrung me to tears. What troubles me most is that whatever solution I come up with, someone else has jogged ahead, tried it, and returned disappointed, and broke.
I want to know all about marriage and divorce by experiencing one and fearing the other. Coparenting: Invited to picture it, I began to cry. My aunt-figure and I sat outside of Swedish Hill at a two-seater bistro table eating an oatmeal cookie with some sort of candied fruit in it, looking out at celluloid construction barricades and busy traffic. There was nothing hygge about the scene except for the blue-eyed child and their father that materialized behind the hand that blocked my eyes from view. Marriage appeared not to be part of the tableau, at least not an important one. I have begun to imagine these children and assess the conditions of my life through the lens of a woman who is their mother. Within an instant of them in mind, they tidy what would otherwise be a messy trough of quarter-life uncertainty. Already, they are obedient, helpful children. This practice initiates the countless times they will be used to fulfill adult whims indifferent to them.
Negociant, Pistachio Chip
As of January 13th, 2026, the price of gold is $4,585.90 per ounce. A little sister is worth her weight in it. I have one myself and recommend her highly. She doesn’t ask me many questions because she knows things already. Often, I look at her like the adult in the room because in a way, she is. I’ve been behaving like another kind of little sister less knowledgeable than my own. I’ve gotten in the habit of asking other adults questions that I could not answer myself. I asked L, in different words, “what does it feel like to maintain a relationship for a decade?” She described the feeling and I was surprised that I had felt it, once, too. What about couples therapy—does it work? I will ask someone else, “what is it like to get divorced?”
It’s Wednesday, January 7th, 6:30pm. I’m killing time before I meet L across the street at Cinema 21 to watch Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice. The first bite is exceptionally good. Chewy. Soft in the middle. Crunchy edges. A little too sweet. Now, unbearably so. I’m reading Middlemarch and the sisters make me set it down.
Soen / Courier Coffee, Chocolate Chip Cookie
I’ve been hitting the self-help pretty hard. In just three months, I’ve noticed marginal improvements in my quality of life. These are likely unnoticeable to everybody but myself. I notice a fullness to the days. I lie in bed waiting to fall asleep, satiated, even if I missed dinner. The future is a passing thought that incites brief pleasure before it dissolves. There are career paths. Weekend activities. Relocations. Books to read. Hobbies to yield to. There are options. Endless options. And time enough for them all. In the industry of self-improvement, an outcome like mine is considered a small miracle. I don’t take this for granted.
A success story is not without supportive roles, the invisible preconditions that make a world of difference. For instance, I go to Soen most days. I go to Soen on the way to the office where I will encounter the stress of other people as well as other people hard at work helping themselves. I go to Soen on the weekends with friends who have returned home from New York for the holidays, and friends who have returned from their holiday visits back home. I go to Soen to run into people. I go there to be alone. A small bowl of their winter vegetable miso soup improves my quality of life markedly.
When I go, I rarely get the chocolate chip cookie. There are tells that give away a bad cookie. One of the biggest tells is if it’s domed. A small circumference with a taught, raised shape can indicate not enough fat or moisture. Almost every time that means the texture will be dry and horrible. It will stick to your teeth. Domed cookies, when I make them at home, are failures. But, here’s the thing. The chocolate chip cookie from Courier Coffee (which shares tight corners with Soen) is domed. And, it’s good. There’s a healthy pinch of flaky salt on top. There’s a crunchy bottom and a chewy middle. There are chunks of bittersweet chocolate, not chips or discs. It doesn’t look the way I’d want it to. I wouldn’t change anything about it.