insufferablevegan

This mint is thin. Like I won't be.

Part of what we do as vegans is to deprive ourselves for a cause. Another part of what we do is act like we’re not depriving ourselves so as not to scare off potential newbies. I almost never feel deprived. I’m used to it after almost 17 months and hardly miss anything I can no longer eat. But I do recall looking in the freezer last year and seeing a box of Thin Mints, then reaching my hand in and removing said box, and then examining the ingredients to find that, not surprisingly, there was something in them I no longer eat. That being milk.

But before I recalled that, I forgot it. You see, when I saw a billboard or whatever it was a few weeks ago that reminded me it’s almost Girl Scout Cookie time, I couldn’t remember whether they were vegan or not. So I did a little research on the computerkabob and found out that SOME Girl Scout Cookies seem to be… calm down… vegan.

It was a bit confusing at first. When you go the cookie website of the national Girl Scouts there’s a link for ingredients. And when you click it you get an odd colorful graphic. 16 different Nutrition Facts/Ingredients labels pop up. Eight are little, EIGHT ARE BIG. It took me a bit of thunkin’ and some further research to figure out what was going on. Turns out, the Girl Scouts get their cookies from two different bakers. You can read all about it on Wikipedia. One is Little Brownie Bakers, which is part of Keebler, which is part of Kellogg’s. The other is ABC Bakers, which is part of Interbake Foods, which is part of the Canadian company George Weston Limited. Capiche?

Odd colorful graphic.

Well, you don’t really need to capiche, because here’s all you need to know: All eight types of Little Brownie cookies (the ones with the small labels in the graphic) have milk. HOWEVER, only three of the eight ABC types (the big labels) have milk. That’s right: five of the eight ABC kinds ARE VEGAN! Now keep in mind, when I say vegan, I’m only saying they ain’t got milk, or anything else on the label that seems WFU (wrong for us). BUT the problem for me was that I’ve only ever seen Little Brownie ones.

So I made some calls. And here’s what I learned. The Girl Scouts are divided up into councils. Some councils comprise one county, like the Los Angeles council, while other councils are made up of two or more counties. Each council makes their own decision as to which of the two bakers they will buy from.

Now this is where I go all SoCal on you. If you’re not in SoCal, call, email or tweet your local council to find out which baker they use. The Los Angeles Council buys their cookies from Little Brownie Bakers so they’re no good for us. However, the Girl Scouts of Orange County buys its cookies from ABC so five of the eight types, including Thin Mints, are okay! The other types we can eat are Shout Outs, Peanut Butter Patties, Lemonades, and Thanks-A-Lots.  (The Caramel deLites, Shortbreads and Peanut Butter Sandwich cookies contain milk and are nicht gut.)

The Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council, which comprises San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, also buy from ABC and are thus also good for those same five types. Ventura County is part of the Girl Scouts of California’s Central Coast Council which also includes Santa Barbara County, San Luis Obispo and on up to Monterey and Santa Cruz. They buy from Little Brownie so forget ’em. The Girl Scouts of San Diego also buys from Little Brownie so they’re out, too.

The Girl Scouts of Orange County begin their booth sales on February 17 and end on March 11. You can plug in a zip code for a town close to L.A. like Seal Beach (90740) or Westminster (92683) into the handy Find Cookies box on girlscoutcookies.org and it will tell you the time and place where you can find Girl Scouts set up in front of the nearest supermarket, bank, or big box store selling cookies. Maybe you can combine it with that trip to the Seabirds Truck that you’ve been thinking about taking forever. UPDATE: There is a new Orange County Cookie Finder website.

If Riverside or San Bernardino Counties are more  your thing, they already started their booth sales a couple of days ago and will continue theirs all the way through March 28. Again, you can use the Cookie Finder box on girlscoutcookies.org to find the best spot for buyin’.

There’s even a Cookie Finder app available for iPhone but it’s made by Kellogg’s (Little Brownie) so I’m not sure if it taps into the entire database the website does or if it only tells you where to find Little Brownie (verboten) ones.

Now all that’s left to do is to figure out how to persuade the Girl Scouts of Los Angeles to change bakers for next year. We’ve got 11 months to do that so let’s get crackin’!

Tags: ABC Bakers, booth sales, cookie finder app, George Weston, Girl Scout cookies, Girl Scouts of Orange County, Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council, Interbake, Keebler, Kellogg's, Lemonades, Little Brownie, Little Brownie Bakers, Peanut Butter Patties, Seabirds Truck, Shout Outs, Thanks-A-Lot, Thin Mints, vegan, vegan Girl Scout Cookies, vegan Thin Mints