It's a bit late, but I figured I owed you all an update on the 2011 Web Warren Cookie Labs' season.

The Brown-Suited Elves delivered our 15-lb carton of Christmas Magic on the eve of 21 December, as expected. We shipped eight types of cookies, plus spiced pecans. Because our printer was refusing to, well, print, we couldn't do a funny little Christmas poem like we did last year. Instead, we printed up a "shipping manifest" over at the UPS Store. The elves there wear black with gold trim. Sadly, we found evidence of gremlins in their printer drivers, so instead of pretty, double-sided printing, we ended up with five pages of manifest-and-ingredients-list. 

This year, the Web Warren cookie spread consisted of: (READ MORE)

The following filk developed last weekend in the thick of Christmas Cookie baking. You may appreciate the irony of "healthy cookies"...

Oatmeal, the Raisin Cookie

With apologies to Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, Rudolph, Kris, Burl, and the Singing Cowboy, himself...

There are Cardamom Spice Rounds, and Cheese Straws, and Spritzen
Chocolate chippers and others with mix-ins
But even at Christmas we bake
The "most healthy" cookie, by Jake!

Oatmeal, the Raisin Cookie
Had a very bumpy top
And once you bit into it,
You would never, ever stop

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Well, it's that time of year again. The Web Warren Cookie Labs are setting up for the current season's research experi production run. In addition to the usual questions of which general types of cookies to bake, the specific sub-varieties start screaming out for attention.

That we will be "open for business" is without question. That we will be performing a certain degree of "quality control" goes without saying. The sizes of most of the cookies (small to miniature) have been predetermined by previous feedback. The questions include how many varieties to make, and whether to use wheat flour or another flour, sugar or Splenda, butter or yogurt-based blends, how many versions of a particular variety to make, and which ones to decorate.

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You can do this.

That's a campaign, started by Kim over at Texting My Pancreas, aimed at telling us that self-care is neither so painful nor so difficult to understand that we cannot do it. It's also, for many -- particularly those in the Type 1 community -- a rallying call for ending the traditional dietary restrictions for people with diabetes. The problem is, when it seeps through to Type 2s like me.

I can haz cupcakes? I haz BIG Crumbs cupcake.

I can haz pizza? I haz many slices.

I can haz chocolate? I haz large chocolate bar.

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It seems that everyone has some sort of allergy or food intolerance nowadays. Many of us with diabetes try to avoid sugars (or carbohydrates in general). Those of us with hypertension must restrict sodium intake; those with high cholesterol, saturated fats. The incidence of anaphylactic peanut allergy seems to be increasing so rapidly that restaurants are putting peanut warnings on the doors to their premises. And then there's the most prevalent food allergy of all, wheat.

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Back when I was in Junior High, I took a summer creative writing course at our local public library. One of the prompts the instructor gave us for developing a story was, "There are two types of people: those who like egg yolks, and those who do not." On the surface, it seems a ludicrous way to split up a population. But it's those egg yolks (and sticks of butter) that have been frustrating me, and that's giving me some insight into some of our fellow PWDs' daily frustrations. 

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