by Ian Elliot
Northern News Services

NNSL (Nov 07/97) - The Girl Guides' infamous chocolate-mint cookies are on sale in the North for the first time ever.

You can buy them now at the Centre Square Mall. If you want to tear out of the house now to buy a box or nine before they're gone, we can wait until you get back to finish this.

Better now?

The cookies, worshipped by sweet-lovers across North America, never made it much further north than Edmonton in past years. Girl Guides and Brownies here sold the chocolate-and-vanilla sandwich cookies, which as any connoisseur will tell you, are all right, but not masterful.

The other cookies, though, which feature a crunchy chocolate-mint wafer wrapped in bittersweet chocolate, are sublime.

"I'd be surprised if we're not sold out by this weekend," cautioned Kathy Yurris, territorial commissioner for the NWT Girl Guides.

The cookies never made it here before because the Toronto manufacturer sent the cookies to Edmonton, and the Northern Guides had to arrange shipping from there.

They only did that for the spring shipment of creme-sandwich cookies, and since the mint ones are sold in the fall, the North always missed out.

This year, however, the manufacturer shipped 2,400 boxes directly to Yellowknife, and troops here and in smaller communities such as Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet, Hay River and Norman Wells have them.

Yurris does not expect to have the boxes for long, though. They cost $3.50 each or three for $10, and are for sale only at the mall in Yellowknife and through guides in the smaller communities.

Door-to-door selling has been ruled out because of the early darkness and possibility of cold weather.

Money raised by the cookie sales stays in the North and is used for training for leaders and development of programs for the guides.