Decorating my New Home

Hahaha if I were not in control, my husband would definetly have a pinball machine in our living room and only beer in the fridge. It’s a good thing I am there to load up on the fruits and veggies (and of course to decorate with a little more style than a pinball machine and college drinking posters! Haha)

I’d say abandon the cookie idea… those look like they’d fall apart in kindergartners’ hands. Something not so messy would be key. And I definitely think stereotypes are somewhat true, they have to come from somewhere! Although I’ve actually never heard the one about mexicans being lazy… that doesn’t make sense.

Stereotypes do typically stem from somewhere, however, they almost always have a negative effect on the person being stereotyped. Even though the “all Asians are smart” sounds like a “positive”, it can set unrealistic expectations for Asians. Teachers may have different expectations of Asian children and grade/teach/treat them accordingly. Asian children may grow up with more stress because they are aware that they are expected to be the smartest in the class. Stereotyping is usually all-around bad.

Oooh, I love all your pepper stuff! Especially the little weiner dog. Also, dude’s fridges make me crazy. I’m dog sitting for a friend right now, a gay dude who is very much a straight-dude-like bachelor, and his fridge is filled with nothing more than Diet Mountain Dew and cheese. Lots and lots of cheese. How do people live like that?! It makes me want to take him grocery shopping and teach him how to properly stock a pantry and fridge.

At least the Rangers won lastnight (yay!). Beer for breakfast? Yuck!
I think you should make the cookies, but instead of using banana as the filling, fill the middle with orange colored frosting. Another idea is to make both regular chocolate-chip cookie sandwhiches and cocoa chocolate-chip sandwhich cookies.
If that does not sound appealing, you could make chocolate cocoa cupcakes as well as spice cupcakes (mmmmm, nutmeg!) and frost them to look Halloweenie. Just ideas!
Have you ever thought of making sugar cookie wafer cookies to look like witches’ fingers, and then bring your famouse cookie-dough dip for dipping? That would be another good idea!

Aw! A kindergarten teacher- I envy her. That was my favorite to teach by far! 🙂 Those little kiddos are lucky ducks to be given something sweet from you!

thanks for your comment about “mexicans being lazy” being false – i wholeheartedly agree. i live in mexico and people here work harder than in any other country i’ve visited or lived in. their work week is monday through saturday and most work from early morning until late at night. the economy is awful here, but rarely do you see something begging on the street – instead you’ll have people eager to do some service for money (wash your car, sell you candy, etc), literally inventing jobs for themselves since the real jobs don’t exist here. that is the opposite of lazy.

Oh gosh I’m terrible at decorating!! I still barely have anything in my room and I’ve lived in it for 6 months.

I hate the idea of stereotypes, especially as a vegan because I know people stereotype ME and I hate it! I do love the Chandler reference, he was always my favorite 🙂

Have fun decorating! Moving into a new place and decorating it is the most rewarding part of moving for me, for sure! Can’t wait to see what you come up with.

And how sweet that you want to help your kindergarten teacher friend and her little students out. They’ll love whatever you make 🙂

That’s hilarious – were they trying to keep the pine cone fresh?! 🙂

Hi Katie,

congrats on the new apartment and on the decorating fun.

I think your question about stereotypes is a super important one. We all need to stop and ask ourselves if our beliefs about a group are open minded, or if they are unconsciously colored by unfair stereotypes. I think even stereotypes that seem positive, like asians being smart are worrisome. The genetic component of race is largely discredited (as in, there is just as much genetic variety within one race as across multiple races), so Asian’s being genetically smarter is not true. And “Asians” is just too big a group to generalize too much about culturally. If a person meets an Asian with the automatic thought “this person is smart”, it clouds their ability to really see the person for how they are.

Anyway, I think about this stuff a lot… I’m getting a master’s degree in European Studies, focusing on immigration in/to Europe, so thinking about group stereotypes and how they affect the reception of immigrants consumes a large part of my week.

As does reading your recipes, and thinking about which chocolate goodness I’m going to make next.

First off – thanks for all your delicious recipes. I’ve read your blog for a while, but never felt the need to comment. The controversial subject of stereotyping ultimately piqued my interest.

I agree with what many of the above commenters have said about being wary of “positive” stereotyping as well. Any blanket statement about a specific “race” or “ethnicity” (quite loaded terms in and of themselves) can come across as offensive, regardless of the intention. Especially in such a globalized, internet accessible world, crosscultural interactions and physical migration problematize the neat culture categories we find it easier in which to view the world.

I think it’s also important to think critically about the historical and especially political context within which stereotypes are created, reinforced, and perpetuated. Discriminatory government policies would not be effective or gain support without the common practice of dehumanizing the “other.” Likewise, the “model minority” stereotype ascribed to Asians in America is often used as justification for the mentality that all immigrants should be able to pull themselves up from their bootstraps and achieve the “American dream.” This perspective does not take into account specific immigration policies, and the fact that the stereotype is built around a small population of East Asian immigrants to the US that came with preexisting higher education and wealth.

The subject matter is obviously heavy and elicits quite a varying response. I think that the more interesting question is not whether or not we believe a stereotype to be true, but how and why we have stereotypes at all?

I just read this at a great blog called chookooloonks and thought I’d share it since it seems to go perfectly with this topic:

“People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot … Biologists often talk about the ‘ecology’ of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just becaue it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warmed them, the soil in which they put down roots, the rabbits and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid?”

~ Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

I can completely understand where your comments are coming from and living in Texas myself, I have heard more than a few rather nasty stereo types. What people fail to understand though is that the ‘lazy’ lable was applied to not only Mexicans, but generally all Mediterreanean peoples that had a tradition of taking mid-afternoon siestas. People also fail to understand what people of those cultures know in that when you push yourself for hours on end your brain gets tired even if you don’t feel it and you tend to be less productive but if you take a couple of hours in the afternoon to get something to eat, rest a little and relax your productivity goes through the roof! See, we all need to have recess in the afternoon to recharge our batteries, not just the grade school kiddies! 🙂

While I understand that people may have been upset by the stereotype issue, this is a blog about delicious, healthy, desserts. This is not a political blog or a social issues blog. I think its fine to politely disagree with someone in a few concise sentences, but I dont think this is the best platform to delve into the social, political, and economic reasons why stereotypes exist or to write several paragraphs on the issue. Just my opinion