Lest I forget….

Back in January (Jan. 17 at 9:17 p.m. to be exact. Ah, the joys of chronicling in a digital age), I tweeted: “Chocolate coconut cream cookies from Poland, where have you been all my life?!”

These cookies are better than good. It has a graham-cracker-crust-like (not to be confused with tasting like a graham cracker) cookie base and a coconut cream layer on top of it, which in turn is covered by a bittersweet chocolate shell. At room temperature, your teeth will sink luxuriantly into the softness of chocolate and coconut cream but oh snap! end with the pleasant crunch of the cookie.

The blend of flavors and mouth-feel of this decadent disc can not be rhapsodized about rapturously enough. I made plans about the cookie because I didn’t want to gorge on them and get sick of them. Only 2 boxes a month, which was amended to a more realistic one box a week (what, there’s only 16 to a box!). Little did I know that after Jan. 17 at 9:17 p.m., my cookies and I would be parted (yeah, we finished that box that night).

In the intervening 55 days and 22 hours (give or take 5 minutes), I hounded and badgered workers at World Market where the cookies were last seen. However, because I could not remember the name of the cookies (was it Pasja? Pasjo? Do those names even sound Polish?), their search efforts were fruitless.

I went online and looked for them, but I couldn’t remember the maker, and “chocolate coconut cream cookie” searches turned up mostly recipes. But why would I want to bake when the perfection was already captured, packaged and waiting for me somewhere in the world?

After searching for what seemed like an eternity, I started to forget what the box and cookie looked like. I wanted to find those cookies so bad, I began to see them in other cookies that looked nothing like what I remembered. I rationalized, “Maybe it is this cookie, but it’s just shaped differently now and called something else and doesn’t have the visible chocolate coating according to this country’s preference.”

I began to doubt in the continued existence of the said cookies. Maybe that had been the last box ever made. We had, after all, scooped up the only box in the store. Maybe I should just savor what I could of the memory and leave it at that.

With a heavy heart, I gave up the search.

Thoughts of the cookies would occasionally flit through my mind, like when I’d drink coconut milk or see palm trees. Or I’d eat a really tasty cookie and turn to my husband and say with a fond, wistful smile, “Remember those chocolate coconut cream cookies?”

Life continued on, though. Seasons changed from cold, to a little warmer and now rainy (hey, I live in California).

On a particularly wet and rainy day, (Tuesday, March 13, at 7 p.m. to be exact), my husband and I visited World Market. As was our wont, we had our free samples of tea in the back and wandered the aisles.

AND LO AND BEHOLD — the cookies were there.

Party on, little cookies. Party on forever in my mouth.

I finally, and wisely, decided to take a picture of the cookies.

Jammie Karlman is the entertainment editor for the Chico Enterprise-Record. Contact her at buzz@chicoer.com. Follow her on Twitter @JammieKarlman