Why American Jews love Stella D'Oro cookies

As a child, visits to my maternal grandfather and grandmother (of Italian and Polish heritage, respectively) involved eating a lot pasta and pierogi. Dessert, in turn, was sometimes cannoli and poppyseed roll, but often a platter of Stella D'Oro cookies - assorted dainty corrugated rings and logs of buttery dough with almond undertones. My grandfather had developed a taste for them early in his youth as an immigrant from Genoa, and my grandparents' pantry was never without at least one package. Truth be told, my juvenile palate found the cookies too bland (i.e.: insufficiently sugary), but the...