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Maurice Lenell Cookies are the source of many childhood memories, usually involving the way those bone dry pinwheels, jelly stars and other cookies could soak up a pot of coffee and still crack your teeth if you bit down on them. Lenell cookies are ubiquitous staples of local homes come Christmastime. In fact, we can't remember seeing them past the holidays in recent years.
Even so, it's sad to see that both the Lenell cookie factory and the adjoining Norridge Theatre are in the process of being bought by a Vernon Hills real estate company and turned into a retail center anchored by a Costco. Lenell has laid off more than half of its workforce since late December.
While some residents will miss going into the factory's retail center for their yearly purchases, the village of Norridge is salivating at the prospect of all those tax dollars filling their coffers from a gigantic retail outlet. Rumors abound that Lenell will outsource its production overseas, which makes us wonder if their recipe for those paperweights is proprietary.
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The pleasant smell of those cookies is a fond memory from childhood. The taste, not so much.
And yet, somehow I could probably still manage to down an entire box of Pinwheels. Thank goodness for the self-regulating paper cups.
I LOVE pinwheel cookies... Oh how I will miss them and all of their pink dust.
Costco: for middle-class folks who are as cheap as poor people, but think Wal-Mart is too white trash.
Maurice Lenell has great cookies, and I'll miss them. However, I'm really going to miss the Norridge Theatre. I'm sad to see that theatre go, as it is the only theatre in that area. The Norridge Theatre is also one of the few multi-plexes left that have that not-updated-since-the-70s look, which I find kind of charming. Now folks on the northwest side have got to go to Village Crossing (in Skokie!) to see a movie. Arrgghh.
I absolutely love pinwheels and jelly stars, but no friggin' way am I eating them if they're made overseas. Screw that! Would be even worse than the notion of Pepperidge Farm cookies (remember their Connecticut yankee commercials in the 1970s in which they boasted about local goodness?) now being manufactured in Indonesia (!), which they most assuredly are. Outsource THIS....
It looks like they only went as far as Ohio! Their website says they'll still be in Chicago area stores, or you can order online. I only just found out they closed and thought they were gone forever!
http://www.mauricelenell.com/cookiejaroutletstore.html