What We've Been Up To: What to make

Friday, January 2, 2009

What to make

Okay, last year I was naming my recipes "What's for dinner" but then that excluded anything you wouldn't necessarily eat for dinner, so now I'm changing it to "What to make" just to be more inclusive.

Today I made a YUM YUM YUMMY treat. If you weren't sure what kind of cookies to leave for Santa (word has it, his favorite is sugar cookies) or were all out of flour or some other raw ingredient, here's an easy cookie that's sure to earn you big rewards from the big guy, or at least make up for some indiscretions from earlier in the year. I call them "Reindeer poop" but you shouldn't include that in Santa's note if you know what's good for you.

For all you brownie lovers, who fight over the edge pieces, this one's for you too. Stir together a box of dry brownie mix, 1/4 cup each of oil, water & cocoa and two eggs. Sprinkle the top with chopped up pretzels and cook for about 10 minutes then top with a kiss (I used the peanut butter filled ones, but any kind would do). They turn out looking like Reindeer poop, thus the name, but taste just divine. As you can see, they're good for 1-year-olds too, not just Santas.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.
-Theodore Roosevelt