We are entering peak Girl Scout Cookie season.
This weekend, as you're out running errands, you'll start bumping into folding tables stacked with Thin Mints, Samoas and Tagalongs outside supermarkets and stores in Philadelphia and its Pennsylvania and South Jersey suburbs. In Delaware, you'll have to wait until next weekend because sales start there on Feb. 1.
If you are not willing to let your random weekend wanderings determine if you will buy a box of cookies, you can go to Gsep.org and use the cookie finder to see where the scouts will be selling and on what days. There is even an app to track down Thin Mints if the craving strikes while you are motoring about town. Sure, there's an online option too, but there's something special about telling a young scout that, yes, you would like to buy a box of her cookies and then watch her spark into action ready to take your order, retrieve you cookies and accept your cash.
So how much are girl scout cookies this year? That depends. Each council sets its own price (as well as the date they start to sell cookies). There are three councils in our area: Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania, Girl Scouts of the Chesapeake Bay Council and Girl Scouts of Central and Southern New Jersey
Back in 1933, there was a Greater Philadelphia Council and it was the one that started selling cookies, according to Girlscouts.org. That first year, the girls (well, maybe the moms helped) baked cookies and put them in the windows of the Philadelphia Gas and Electric Co. They were 23 cents a box. We would have eaten way too many at that price.
Two years later the Girl Scout Federation of Greater New York started selling commercially baked cookies and by 1937 more than 100 councils were holding cookie sales.
Still, by 1951 there were only three kinds of Girl Scout Cookies: Sandwich, Shortbread and Chocolate Mints, which eventually became Thin Mints.
Thin Mints are the most popular variety, at least according to a survey conducted by Influenster.com two years ago. But when it did a state-by-state breakdown, it found Samoas/Caramel deLites were the most popular in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Delawareans went for the Thin Mints.
We're not going to get into an argument about which cookies are the best (and not just becasue it's clearly Thin Mints). We are just happy it's cookie season again and hope to remember to leave the house with cash in our pockets for the next few weekends.
