Drop In & Decorate – 10,000 Cookies and 10,000 Smiles

Wally Amos. Debbi Fields. Lydia Walshin.

The names are all synonymous with cookies. But, Lydia’s cookies have some premium ingredients and a team of bakers across the country that you’d surely want to have as neighbors.

Lydia, food writer and author of The Perfect Pantry, created Drop In & Decorate based on a simple idea: bake some cookies and gather a group of family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, your worship group or book group to decorate the cookies together. Then donate the cookies to a nonprofit agency serving basic human needs in your own community. It’s a simple idea in a complicated world, and something anyone can do.

Lydia has spent her life dedicated to community involvement, and the growth of Drop In & Decorate, a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, has touched an extraordinary number of lives. Now, the sweet movement which began in her kitchen and enters its eighth year of cookies-for-donation is anticipating another milestone. As 2009 draws to a close, Lydia anticipates that the ten-thousandth cookie will be decorated and donated, the time and location still to be determined.

From her rustic log cabin retreat in the Rhode Island countryside, Lydia shares her thoughts on baking, the mission of Drop In & Decorate, a bit of cookie trivia and the upcoming milestone of 10,000 cookies donated:

T.W. Barritt: If, as you say, you don't have the baking gene, how did you end up leading a campaign devoted to baking cookies?

Lydia Walshin: I laugh every time I think about that, but I think it just proves that life takes you where it wants you to go. I'd never decorated a cookie before I tried my hand at these, and I had no intention of ever doing it again. Not only did it challenge my limited baking skills, but also it seemed impossible that someone with no artistic ability could ever decorate a cookie that would look like something Martha Stewart would have made. Yet I knew as soon as I saw the first batch of cookies -- which, by the way, didn't look anything like Martha's reserved and elegant cookies -- that they were special. And when I delivered them to a family emergency shelter in Boston, and saw people's eyes light up, I knew I was right.

What I didn't know at the time was how powerful the simple gift of a cookie could be, how much joy that beautiful cookies -- and all cookies decorated with love are beautiful -- could bring to the life of someone in difficult circumstances. Our cookies are donated to agencies serving basic human needs for shelter, food, health care, employment -- but there is more to life than just meeting those needs. A cookie lets people know that someone in their community is thinking of them, doing something for them, and values them.

T.W. Barritt: Do you have any idea how much flour, royal icing and good will equates to ten thousand cookies?

Lydia Walshin: That would be a lot of math, but here are some fun statistics from our last Drop In & Decorate holiday event here in Rhode Island. We used 35 pounds of flour, 22 pounds of sugar, 27 pounds of butter, 27 pounds of confectioners sugar, 2-1/4 pounds of meringue powder, 3 dozen + 2 eggs, a bit of vanilla, salt and baking powder. Good will? As the ads say, "Priceless!"

T.W. Barritt: Do you have a favorite cookie, or cookie decoration, and why?

Lydia Walshin: At our events here in my kitchen, I always make 20 or 30 (and sometimes more) different shapes of cookies. I encourage people to make the cookies into whatever they see in the shape. So sometimes a tree turned on its side might become a fish; a whale turned on end becomes a cat; a heart turned upside-down becomes a chubby-cheeked Santa. My personal favorite is a square with a fluted edge. I've seen people turn it into a frame for a picture, a house with a door and windows, a package wrapped with a bow, and a tartan quilt.

T.W. Barritt: What do you think the occasion of ten thousand Drop In & Decorate cookies signifies?

Lydia Walshin: Ten thousand cookies is a wonderful milestone. It means that this idea has spread far beyond my own kitchen, to groups of friends, parents and their children, office mates and church groups all across the country. I think of it as our sweet sixteen party -- just the first of many milestones we hope to celebrate. In the coming year we'll be working on partnerships with some national organizations, so that no matter where you are, if you want to host an event and don't know of a nonprofit agency in your own community, we'll be able to match you with an agency that would love to have your cookies. Now that we are a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, we hope to be able to provide financial support. Pillsbury is helping us do that, by offering coupons that can be used to purchase flour, cookie mix or icing, and Wilton has donated some cookie cutters for people who are planning to host their own cookies-for-donation parties. I hope our next milestone is 100,000 cookies donated from events in all 50 states and across Canada.

If you’d like to host your own Drop In & Decorate® event, Pillsbury and Wilton would like to help.

Pillsbury has donated 50 VIP coupons, worth $3.00 each, off any Pillsbury product -- including sugar cookie mix and icing -- to be distributed, first come, first served, while supply lasts, to anyone who plans to host a Drop In & Decorate event (max. 5 coupons per person). And we'll include a Comfort Grip cookie cutter, donated by Wilton, to people who plan to host cookies-for-donation events.

Write to lydia AT ninecooks DOT com for more info on how to get your free coupons and cookie cutters.

©2009 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

Community is Key Ingredient in Lydia’s Perfect Pantry

Her Rhode Island pantry is legendary, stocking more than 240 items. When you meet her, she is warm, generous, direct, at times uncompromising, and always keenly insightful.

With all that going on, one’s inevitable first question feels a bit like a cliché – Why is food blogger Lydia Walshin so preoccupied with her Perfect Pantry?

It began when she and her husband Ted moved to a cozy log cabin in Rhode Island. Managing the kitchen space was essential.

“I wanted not to have shelves full of things I didn’t use,” she tells me. Indeed, an item is only eligible for Perfect Pantry status if it meets three criteria – 1) The ingredient must be used in other recipes; 2) It must be something used in more than one way; 3) It is used in only one way, but over and over again.

“I won’t buy it because it’s in a beautiful bottle or because it’s in one recipe,” she states categorically.

On the surface, that can sound a little like a “how-to” tip from a home keeping handbook. But, spend a few hours with Lydia and you soon learn that the Perfect Pantry is actually a metaphor for a well-seasoned life – filled with discovery, diverse experiences and relationships – where community thrives at the center.

We alight from our taxi in front of Dean & Deluca on Broadway in Soho. Lydia has travelled to New York and done me an enormous favor. In return, I’ve promised an afternoon of culinary play, along with a gourmet foraging expedition. If Lydia can find one or two pantry items at Dean & Deluca that she currently does not stock, I’ll pick up the tab.

We walk the gleaming, spacious aisles of the gourmet market and Lydia scrutinizes the ingredients that line the shelves. “Nope…Already tried that…Not that one…” she murmurs quietly. She notices a package of plump, russet-colored grains labeled Kamut, which look like a cross between rice and orzo pasta. It makes the cut, and she drops the package into her canvas Ninecooks tote bag.

We continue our exploration. “Do you use fenugreek?” she asks me. “You put it in things I don’t make.”

We pass a massive display stocked with spice tins. A gleaming pewter-colored canister catches her eye. The words Grains de Paradise are printed in fancy script on the label. Lydia shakes the canister with curiosity, pulls out an I-Phone in a hot pink case and types some search terms into Google.

She locates a lead on Gourmet Sleuth. Grains de Paradise was once used as a cheaper substitute for black pepper. The exotic name was invented by medieval spice traders in an effort to inflate the price.

“I’m not making this up,” she insists. Perhaps it is the compelling name, or the age-old connection to hucksterism but Grains de Paradise, too, is selected for consideration in the Perfect Pantry.

We admire brilliant orange papaya spears. We inspect a large blue vacuum-packed can of peanuts with a friendly cartoon elephant printed on the packaging. The generic product name reads “Quality Nuts.”

“I want the can,” says Lydia admiringly.

We encounter the world’s longest biscotti and partake in a little layer-cake envy in the bakery department.

“Your cakes are just as good,” she tells me.

Lydia began writing professionally at the age of 16, but it was some time before she took on the topic of food full-time. She is far from the detached reporter and her capable hands often find their way into the story.

“I only do two things in life really well – I write and I organize,” she explains.

In 1995 Lydia published “South End Cooks: Recipes from a Boston Neighborhood.” The book is a microcosm of her Boston community conveyed through the personal stories and recipes of 80 cooks in home kitchens, restaurants and local agencies across the South End. The menu of voices and recipes is as varied as the neighborhood – two generations of Chinese cooks, a restaurateur from Ethiopia, or a Jesuit priest serving special dinners to people with HIV/AIDS and their caregivers. Proceeds from the sale went to three local community agencies.

The creation of Ninecooks was a defining moment. Now a full-fledged resource offering cooking classes for friends and families, it began as a gathering of friends around the dinner table prevailing upon Lydia to organize and teach a group cooking lesson. The group of nine cooks gathered regularly in Lydia’s Rhode Island kitchen. “It’s this encasing kind of place that forces people into intimacy when they cook,” she says. Eventually, Ninecooks became “the thing that identified me and the home for all my commercial food activities.”

Lydia joined the food blogging world in June 2006 and immediately embraced the community. She reveled in the opportunity to write her own material without the filter of an editor. It was intended as a one-year project. From the outset, the Perfect Pantry offered more than her voice on the subject of food and ingredients. There were Bookworms, Guest Bloggers and Other People’s Pantries supplementing Lydia’s thorough research and engaging copy. Lydia frequently offers anecdotes of her husband, her friend Peter and her extended family. She talks of creating links to food bloggers whose writing she enjoys, in an effort to support their work. There is a hint of excitement in her voice as she describes two bloggers connecting through the comments section on her own blog. She hopes that visitors find a welcoming place at the Perfect Pantry, and that the voice they hear is one of kindness.

“Community is very important to me,” she reflects. “The older I get, I see more ways to tie my community to the greater community.”

These days much of her energy is devoted to Drop In & Decorate – Cookies for Donation, a project she created that has now become a not-for-profit organization. Friends gather to bake and decorate cookies. The activity is social, and the homemade results are donated to a local shelter or food pantry. Hundreds of batches of whimsical cookies have been baked and decorated for the community since Drop In & Decorate was first conceived and the enthusiasm continues to spread. There have been at least 30 Drop In & Decorate parties held in 15 states, with two in Germany and one in India.

It all wraps up into quite a delicious package.

“Ninecooks is my defining brand, Drop In & Decorate is my passion, and the Perfect Pantry is home to the most fun and creative writing I’ve done in years,” says Lydia.

I have the distinct impression that the world is Lydia Walshin’s Perfect Pantry, well-stocked with robust ingredients, creative cooks, kindness, hope and promise.

And what about the complete story behind new pantry items Kamut and Grains de Paradise? Stay tuned to Lydia’s Perfect Pantry for the answer!

©2009 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

Drop In & Decorate Delivers Holiday Cheer

Bake. Decorate. Donate.
Free how-to guide!

Cookies are such a sweet signature of the holidays. A homemade cookie – beautifully decorated – inspires good cheer, evokes memories of loved ones and restores childlike wonder. So many of us have these gifts in abundance, but there are many who aren’t as fortunate.

One of my favorite food bloggers, Lydia Walshin of The Perfect Pantry, long ago recognized the restorative power and sense of community found in a whimsical batch of cookies. Some years back, she created the program “Drop In & Decorate: Cookies for Donation” based on a simple idea: bake some cookies, invite family, friends or co-workers to help decorate and then donate the cookies to a local shelter, food pantry, lunch program or senior center. Then watch the magic happen.

Over the years, Drop In & Decorate has inspired hundreds of people to organize decorating parties and spread the flavor of holiday cheer to those less fortunate in the community. Lydia has worked tirelessly and this year established Drop In & Decorate as a not-for-profit association that helps people organize Drop In & Decorate parties year-round.

Lydia believes that every day is an opportunity to spread comfort and joy in the community, but of course, the winter holidays are a particularly good time. She’s been baking furiously the last few weeks, and is encouraging all of us to do the same in this season of good will. Check out the links provided here for resources and tips on how you can host a Drop In & Decorate party. You’re just about to start that holiday baking anyway, so why not make an extra batch, host a decorating party, and watch the magic happen in your own community?

©2008 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

Drop In & Decorate: Cookies for Donation

Cookies and love go hand-in-hand. I learned that from my grandmothers who would bake us luscious sand cookies pressed into fluted molds, rich holiday butter cookies and chewy oatmeal raisin cookies from a recipe invented by fitness expert Jack La Lanne. The action of preparing and bringing us the gift of cookies was an expression of love. I learned it from my mom, as well, who patiently taught me to make Peanut Butter Cookies and Chocolate Coconut Drops, from Betty Crocker’s New Boys and Girls Cook Book, that our family would share.

My friend, Lydia – one of the nicest people in the entire blogosphere and the proprietor of the Internet’s best-stocked pantry – also knows that love is the primary ingredient in homemade cookies. Lydia is once again leading a program she created five years ago called “Drop In & Decorate: Cookies for Donation.” She’s asked her blog friends to spread the word. The concept is simple, and a great way to share confections and love throughout the community: bake some cookies, invite family, friends or co-workers to help decorate and then donate the cookies to a local shelter, food pantry, lunch program or senior center.

It’s amazing the happiness that has been generated by some sugar, flour, icing and a little love. Last year, Lydia herself hosted 62 adults and teens who decorated 800 cookies for delivery to six shelters in Rhode Island. But even a single batch of cookies is sure to inspire an afternoon of fun and put a smile on the face of someone less fortunate. Would you give it a try? Lydia offers a well-stocked pantry of resources that can help you get started at her Ninecooks web site.

This year, King Arthur Flour is pitching in and has created a special kit to make it easy to host your own Drop In & Decorate party. If you order a Drop In & Decorate baking kit now through November 15, King Arthur Flour will include a free dough scraper with each order. Add the kit to your shopping cart. On the payment page, enter Promotion Code "Dropin" to the Promotion field and click the Update button. The page will refresh and the dough scraper will be added to your order. The offer is valid through November 15 only, but the kit is on sale until December 26, and would make a great holiday gift.

I love to visit Lydia’s Perfect Pantry and learn the real story behind my favorite ingredients. Lydia is one of my favorite "Culinary Types" and her pantry prose makes me smile every day. And, if you join her Drop In & Decorate party, you will surely spread smiles throughout the community this holiday season!

©2007 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved