As a kid, I couldn’t wait to dig out the toy surprise in the Cracker Jack box. Opening the box without mangling the sealed top was a Houdini feat. With fingers crawling searching for the toy prize, kernels of caramel-coated popcorn and peanuts spilled out of the sides.
Retrieving your intriguing fortune from a fortune cookie isn’t nearly as tricky as finding the Cracker Jack box surprise. The cellophane wrapper around the fortune cookie tears pretty easily.
But opening and reading the printed celestial-forecast surprise is just as exciting!
Chinese food without a fortune cookie is Cracker Jacks without the toy surprise. It’s a cake without icing; it’s a meal without dessert.
We expect the message in the fortune cookie like we expect the toy in the Cracker Jack box.
A fortune cookie usually accompanies every Chinese food order. It’s a PO (personal offense) if I don’t get one or more fortune cookies.
I don’t pay the bill without it.
No, I’m not a cookie monster.
Don’t get me wrong. The sweet, crisp vanilla-tasting cookie is good. But there’s something about that concealed little strip of paper. The mystery of what’s printed on the slither of paper is all the rave.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, what today’s fortune befalls?
But what about the mystery of the fortune cookie?
Are fortune cookies Chinese in origin?
What if I told you the fortune cookie was first made in California? That’s right, right here in America.
That doesn’t make sense. You wouldn’t expect to get an American-made cookie in a Chinese restaurant.
What about a Japanese cookie in a Chinese restaurant?
The Chinese fortune cookie mystery involves Makoto Hagiwara, a Japanese immigrant. Hagiwara came to America in 1878. He opened the first Japanese restaurant in San Francisco, California.
Hagiwara operated the Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and served fortune cookies with green tea. During that time, Hagiwara’s Japanese fortune cookie was called Senibe, a Japanese rice cracker made with a flat press.
Hagiwara decided to put a note in each cookie by folding the dough.
The cookies were very popular and in great demand. Makoto became popular as well, with his initials MH imprinted on every cookie. He couldn’t make enough of these hand-made cookies to keep up with the demand.
Hagiwara asked Benkyodo, a local confectionary shop, to take over making the cookies for him. Benkyodo invented a machine to mass-produce the cookies for Hagiwara.
Upon suggestion from the confectionary shop, Hagiwara added vanilla flavoring for more appeal to American palates. What began as Senbei became the fortune cookie.
During World War II, Chinese restaurants began mass-producing the cookies. So, now we have the Chinese fortune cookie.
‘You will soon be receiving some wonderful news’ was my last fortune cookie surprise. The fortunes are so general that they can apply to anyone on any given day. But that doesn’t diminish the excitement.
My lucky numbers were 359, 24 29, and 47. The Japanese fortune didn’t include lucky numbers.
It’s fun to eat the 107-calories fortune cookies and read the little prophetic surprise that’s meant just for me.