I was 5-years-old, standing on a white wooden step stool in my grandma’s kitchen. We were baking cookies – chocolate chip cookies. She creamed the butter and sugar in an old, old stand mixer. I swear it was the first one off the line at the KitchenAid factory.

I was desperate to help – and to learn. I was in awe of how she cracked an egg with one hand. Thankfully, Grandma was kind enough to oblige. She let me dump a teaspoon of baking powder into the sifter or pour in the vanilla. You know, the easy stuff. But I wanted to do more and so, when she turned her back to answer the phone (a rotary!), I took a handful of pretzels and threw them in. And turned on the mixer.

There was no turning back, then.

When Grandma heard the mixer, she ran over, frantic. I think she was afraid my arm was caught in the machine. Nope. I just decided pretzels should go in the cookies. She, on the other hand, wasn’t so happy about the addition but rather than waste the dough, she thought she would teach me a lesson. She would make me eat chocolate chip cookies with pretzels in them.

As you can guess, it was pure torture … not. I loved every last bite of cookie. Well, the bites I did get. It seems my frenzy over the cookies piqued Grandma’s interest, and she gave in, trying a bite. Then a few more.

It was that day that the Garbage Cookie was born, in my grandma’s small kitchen on Masterson Avenue, when I was just 5.