There is a market around where I work (below Telegraph Hill) that seems to sell the Stella D’oro product line. They produce the cookies and “Breakfast Treats” from my childhood and I thought they were either unavailable on the west coast or the company went out of business. But then I heard Patton Oswalt do a bit about Breakfast Treats and then they suddenly appeared on the “please take” table at work.

I was just going about my normal daily business when “Lady Stella” herself arrived. You know those chewy, homemade cookies that are the output of a happy childhood kitchen? These are the opposite. They are hard, almost to the point of tooth-chipping, and they taste like hardtack. The selling point: some have tooth-destroyingly hard sprinkles and/or some sort of industrial epoxy that stands in for frosting. When those alpha cookies are gone, you are left with the terrible three: the brown, the white, and the half moon.