Upgrade Your Comfort Foods: Broke-Ass Girl Scout Cookies

Sunny Select Fudge Mint cookies are currently available at your local Lucky's Supermarkets

Ha! I bet you thought I was going to give you some cheap and crafty recipe to make your own samoas or whatever. Nope, this week I’m flipping the usual “Upgrade Your Comfort Foods” because I want to talk about one of my favorite things in the grocery store: knockoff brand cookies.

First of all, from what I understand, buying Girl Scout cookies is kind of like buying pot: You know you could get some pretty easily because everyone seems to have some, but you don’t actually have anyone to call to get any for yourself. And your friends will let you come over and have some with them, but nobody wants to break you off any from their stash. That’s probably all for the better though, because if you did know someone you could call you’d just end up spending way too much money on it and sitting around being fat and lazy and covered in chocolately-minty crumbs.

So, if you’ve ever been in a grocery store that has more than two aisles, then I’m sure you’ve seen one of the various brands of knockoffs on the shelves. These are a godsend for broke asses like myself who have a sweet tooth, but aren’t friends with any 10 year old girls (because, let’s be honest – that would be pretty creepy). While samoas are usually my favorite whenever they turn up in the office kitchen, I recently found this 10 for $10 deal on packs of Sunny Select Fudge Mint Cookies. [PRO-TIP: You don’t actually have to buy 10 packs to get each one for a dollar, they just put that sign up to make you think you do.] At prices that low the manufacturer couldn’t even pay someone to come up with a clever name like “Tagalongs”. (Which, by the way, are far and away the worst Girl Scout cookies. A rare miss, Girls Scouts of America.) Although The Sunny Select Fudge Mint cookies don’t come in those two tubes (one for the freezer, one for the coffee table) they do have a distinct size advantage. Their 2-inch square size makes the little round Thin Mints look – well, girly.

Cursory research has revealed discount Nutter Butter/Do-Si-Do/Peanut Butter Sandwich cookies and Lemon Cremes, so the rest can’t be too hard to dig up either. There is, however, the guilt factor that comes along with purchasing such cheap cookies. (Besides the obvious disappointed looks from Moms in the checkout line, I mean.) I’m fairly certain the profits from Girl Scout cookies benefits someone, although it’s not really clear because the Girl Scout site says that each cookie’s mission is to: “Help Girls Do Great Things.” But I think if you buy the cheap cookies and then help a girl do something awesome (like teach her how to snowboard, or the advantages of a Zone Defense, or something) then I think you can call it even.