Last week, I got a really cute email forward from a friend. It was entitled Cookie Exchange! Here are the rules:

I’m participating in a collective and hopefully tasty experiment. As such:

You have been invited to be part of a recipe exchange concept. I hope you will participate. I’ve picked those who I think would make this fun. Please send a recipe to the person whose name is in position 1 (even if you don’t know him/her) and it should be something quick, easy and without rare ingredients. Actually, the best one is the one you know in your head and can type out right now. Don’t agonize over it, it is one you make when you are short of time.

After you’ve sent the recipe to the person in position 1 below and only to that person, copy this letter into a new email, move my name to position 1 and put your name in position 2. Only mine and your name should show when you send your email. Send to 20 friends BCC (blind copy).

If you cannot do this within five days, let me know so it will be fair to those participating.

You should receive 36 recipes. It’s fun to see where they come from! Seldom does anyone drop out because we all need new ideas. The turnaround is fast as there are only two names on the list and you only have to do it once.

Person 1:

Person 2:

Sounds easy enough. I wasn’t sure I would know twenty people but who would know how many women I sent the email off to? It seemed fun so I quickly emailed a recipe to Person 1, to whom I was assigned. (For the record, I shared this recipe from Buns in My Oven, as I had recently made it and the cookies tasted as good as they look.)

I heard from one or two people back right away that they wouldn’t be able to participate but since it was a chain email that was sent on to me in the first place, it wasn’t bothersome. I had no idea how many recipes I could expect.

The answer came the next morning.

I had received two emails back. One was from a woman who sent me some kind of chocolate cookie ball recipe (no name for it). The other….Well, let’s just call it an altogether Fail. Here’s what she wrote:

Hi, Sorry all I can think of in my head right now is “throwing together” a mix of sugar, butter, flour, egg whites and vanilla extract, “molding them together” into little balls on a cookie tray and then putting them in the oven. Sounds like how my grandmother made her cake. So they might be good cookies. Might even try them myself. Good luck!

Uhhhhhh.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or what. This isn’t even a recipe! “They might be good cookies.” Really? The only thing I can think of is that the woman felt compelled to forward something on (out of guilt?) but in fact, she should have felt more badly about sending on something that is completely unworkable. No amounts, no instructions, and perhaps, if I’m lucky, I’ll get something that resembles cookies.

Mind = blown.

When I told another girlfriend of mine about the response, since I had also forwarded the chain on to her, she told me that someone who was a friend of a friend had re-forwarded the chain email back to her instead of sending her a recipe. Apparently people weren’t grasping the concept very well, and also? They felt overly pressured to take the instructions literally and think of something in their head, as opposed to going to The Source of All Information, the interwebs, and finding a recipe by typing in “cookie recipe” in Google. That’s literally all one has to do.

(Don’t even get me started on the misuse of quotes. I felt like Joey from Friends was lurking nearby. If you haven’t seen that episode, definitely do.)

Days have passed and that is all I have received. I didn’t put a ton of effort or sentiment behind forwarding the chain so my feelings aren’t hurt that I’m not getting a lot of recipes back. It’s more that I’m astounded that that’s the best one can do on our Internet dependent, instant gratification planet. It’s not like I asked people to make up gift baskets with four different types of handmade cookies and deliver them door-to-door in a wagon.

All this talk of cookies and it being close to lunchtime makes me hungry. I think I’ll go “find something to eat.”