User:Dan Zimmerman/Stern Family Thanksgiving Cookie Bakeoff

Begun in 2009, this annual Thanksgiving tradition pits various members of the extended Stern family, descended from three original sisters (“Shvesters” in Yiddish), against each other in a cookie bake-off. The competition is held on the fourth Saturday of November, following a family-wide touch football match, weather permitting.

History
Prior to the official launch of the competition, there was a decades-long tradition of baking experimentation in the Stern family. Previous standouts included Aunt Ida’s bombs, Uncle Nat’s “kak-a-lot” bread, and a mysterious brownie contribution from Richard Lerner that left the judges dazed and confused.

The official tradition began on Oct. 28, 2009, when Wendy Weinreb (nee Woodrow) made the original call for participants in an e-mail detailing the expected contributions of each family member to the post-Thanksgiving festivities. In addition to a list of pot-luck suggestions, Weinreb announced that there would be “a cookie bake off! Bring your best homemade cookies (Bring enough for 30 relatives).” Weinreb later amended the number of relatives to 35.

Technical details
Cookies are judged based on four criteria: taste, aesthetic appeal, creativity, and presentation, which allows for the singing of songs, dancing of dances, and forging of Wikipedia pages.

Winners
The first official SFTCBO winner was the Marconi cookie, submitted by the Henig/Zimmerman family.

Pop culture references

 * The cookie competition, and its inaugural winner, rose to popular attention when Philip Roth made a glancing mention of them in his 2010 book, Portnoy’s Still Complaining. On page 218 (Houghton Mifflin edition), the protagonist’s fourth wife says “Alex, get out of the bathroom already, the award-winning Marconis are ready!” In interviews, Roth described the Marconi as “a symbol of the wandering Jew’s return to the kitchen.”


 * Marconi cookies also made a cameo appearance in Season 7 of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, when Larry David refuses to relinquish his Marconi to his dying cousin, saying “Grandma says that’s for after.”