Oh, you Americans always butcher the French language.

I have this theory called The Rachel Green Theory that I use to explain why I hate all Jennifer Aniston movies. It's totally weird because I am Team Jenn through and through and there's a very real part of me that still hates Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie because of that whole debacle from a decade ago. Like the other day Amy and I saw the trailer for The Tourist and she whispered, "Do you think Angelina Jolie slept with Johnny Depp when they were filming this?" And I totally whispered back really loudly, "PROBABLY. GOD."

And I mean, I pay money to see Jennifer Aniston movies, practically all of them. But, I don't know, it always feels like I'm just watching Jennifer Aniston prance around doing her Jennifer Aniston thing for 90 minutes or whatever. I don't believe her. She's always going to be Rachel Green to me because she was in my living room every Thursday night for ten years being Rachel Green.

That's the Rachel Green Theory and it is absolute fact.

Except — Look, I'm going to tell you something and it's probably going to really send Abigail and maybe even my sister into a rage blackout, but something happened to me the other day that I'm not proud of. I put in a Friends DVD because I always watch all the Thanksgiving episodes every holiday season, and it took me, like, 45 minutes to stop thinking of Monica as Jules. Yeah. That's right. Jules. Her character from Cougar Town. Which: a) I know I'm the only person in America watching that show. And b) I know I should have punched myself in the face the first time I thought it and continued to punch myself in the face every subsequent two minutes until I'd beaten it into my own head that Courteney Cox will always be Monica, Monica, Monica. (RULES HELP CONTROL THE FUN.)

I have a lot of feelings about Friends and most of them revolve around the fact that I could build a whole entire religion around Friends. You know how C.S. Lewis was a master Christian apologist? One thing he said one time was "I believe in God like I believe in the sun, not only because I see Him, but because by Him all things are seen." Which is how I feel about Friends: that it was the B.C./A.D. fault line and every sitcom after it is illuminated BY it. And this whole other time I was at a church building conference (you heard me) and the speaker was talking about contextualizing the Bible and he said, "The Bible is all truth, but the Bible doesn't contain all the truth in the world." Which is also how I feel about Friends. See, because Friends doesn't contain ALL the funny and all the true things in the entire storytelling world. But it IS all funny and all true things in the storytelling world.

Remember in "The One With Phoebe's Cookies" when Phoebe thinks she has a secret recipe for chocolate chip cookies that has been burned to smithereens? And Monica is bereft because it is the best recipe ever? And Phoebe says she has French relatives who might know it because he grandmother told her she got it from her grandmother, Nesele Toulouse? And then Monica is like, "Uh, Nestle Tollhouse?" And Phoebe shouts down at the floor (to her grandmother) "SEE IT'S STUFF LIKE THIS WHICH IS WHY YOU'RE BURNING IN HELL!!!!" Remember?

The point is that Phoebe and Monica were both right because out of all the chocolate chip cookies from all the recipes in all the whole world, NONE of them are as good as Nestle Tollhouse. And thanks to good old American laziness, you can now buy the dough already made at the grocery store!

And so this week is cooking posts and that little circumlocution was to remind you that Friends is always right, and so it is not a cop-out when I show you how to bake cookies for Santa in three easy steps below.

Step One: Buy Nestle Tollhouse dough.



Step Two: Put the dough on a cookie sheet and bake it.



Step Three: Take the freshly baked cookies out of the oven and put them in front of the Christmas tree with a glass of milk.



Next week I will give you 1,000 words on how I am the love-child of Ross and Leslie Knope. You're welcome in advance.