bob is not a cookie guy. Chocolate chips, regular or double chocolate, okay, but not many others get his attention and with aging, the chocolate chip cookie intake has become closely controlled compelled by his desire for survival. However, date walnut cookies made an impression. They seem to be a widespead tradition across the Middle East first made for bob to experience by Ani's aunt and later by her mom, also joint mother daughter production. Armenians, Lebanese, Turks, and later we discovered Palestinian friends, all with little recipe variations and names. Kombe cookies or Ma'amoul, often associated with the the major religion holidays of the region: Easter, Eid, Hannukah. Sometimestraditional just dates, or just walnuts.
Dates and walnuts are good for you, although cookie dough not so much. Our local production does a few variations, in ingredients and shapes. One round hand shaped then squashoryingnd once ed to a sort of disk, another using a wooden cookie mold. From an Armenian language comtmunity cookbook of their home town Anjar, and once trying out a cookie dough recipe from a Middle Eastern big cookbook Anahid's Gourmet Cookbook, based on the advice of a relative who had tried this variation.