MARK MY WORD: WHAT COULD BE BETTER? PILE ON THE COOKIES AND EGGS

It's that time of year again. The time of year when our living room suddenly disappears in a pile of cookie boxes.

Our home has once again become a cookie warehouse thanks to our oldest daughter, Becca. She's a Girl Scout.

Being a Scout is important. It allows you to annually be a cookie salesman, asking your friends and neighbors to buy those Thin Mints and other assorted treats.

Becca seems to be a natural-born salesman. She sold a ton of cookies this year, a fact readily discernible from the boxes piled in our living room.

Of course, operating a cookie warehouse is hard work. As far as I can tell, elves didn't bake these cookies and they certainly didn't offer to lighten the load in our warehouse.

Without elves, the work becomes a family affair. We opened the shipping boxes and set to work, sorting the colorful boxes of cookies and putting them into plastic grocery bags for delivery to those hungry customers.

Our girls like this kind of work. Of course, our 8-year-old likes it. She's a Scout. But 4-year-old Bailey also enjoys the cookie-sorting task.

My wife, Joni, helped organize our living room warehouse and fill the orders. I arrived on the scene later, but quickly joined in.

I soon camped out on the rocking chair. Becca surrounded me with several shipping boxes full of cookies. I went to work helping the kids fill the grocery bags, which were soon lined up on the carpet.

You can't help but like a job that you can do from the comfort of your rocking chair.

Of course, we all quickly became hungry for some of those cookies. But we resisted the desire to dig into our personal order until we finished the task.

Then, we proceeded to devour a bunch of the tasty cookies. No matter how hard you try, it's impossible to eat just one. Bailey is crazy for the mints; Becca wolfs down the peanut butter sandwiches.

It's a good thing we don't have a cookie warehouse in our home year round. If we did, we'd never stop eating the inventory.

Speaking of eating, there's some good news when it comes to eggs.

The lovable egg is a hot meal today, unless, of course, you're late in getting to the breakfast table.

Customers at one trendy New York restaurant won't find butter or oil on the anti-fat menu. But they will find eggs.

Eggs are back, it seems. Americans will each eat more than 255 eggs this year, the most since 1985.

Egg consumption was pretty scrambled a few years ago, bottoming out at 235 per person in 1991.

But eggs are exciting again, in part because research indicates cholesterol in eggs is not as bad as once thought.

Personally, I'm glad to hear it. I love eggs. I didn't cut back when health experts warned of the dangers of eating too many eggs.

Of course, there are some Americans, like Joni, who would be perfectly happy if they never ate an egg.

But personally breakfast just wouldn't be the same without eggs.

The egg is relatively low in calories, high in protein and has valuable vitamins.

But it also has cholesterol, a fatty substance that is on the wanted poster of every health expert in America.

Still, eggs don't have as much bad cholesterol as the type of fats found in cookies, pastries and other good-tasting stuff.

I'm still waiting for the study that shows that all that good-tasting food is good for you.

In the meantime, I'll continue to eat plenty of eggs and Girl Scout cookies.

As for the cholesterol, let's hope it's just visiting.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.