I hate stereotypes…
But every now and then they ring true! Last night I went to watch the Rangers’ game at some friends’ apartment, and I ended up falling asleep on the couch. When I looked for breakfast this morning, do you know what I found in the guys’ fridge?
A lot of beer.
And not much else! They also have a pinball machine in their living room. As Chandler Bing might say, “Could it be more of a bachelor pad?” (Although I must admit… I kinda want a pinball machine for my new place now.)
The moving process is going along well. I think we’re finally done with the boring part of unpacking boxes, which means we get to focus on more fun things, like decorating. It’s always difficult for me to imagine how “big” decorations—wallpaper, furniture, curtains, etc.—will look in a room, but I love adding little touches of flair.
For the kitchen, I’m bringing back all the red pepper stuff I bought the last time I lived on my own. My roommate says that as long as I continue to make desserts and give her samples, she couldn’t care less what I do to decorate the kitchen!
Foodie Decorating:
Later today, I get to put my decorating skills to another use. My friend is a kindergarten teacher, and she asked if I’d like to make a special treat for her kids’ Halloween party. She still raves about last year’s Funfetti Blondies. I’m not sure what I want to make. Cupcakes? Cookies? Definitely something with chocolate.
Maybe Chocolate-Chip Banana Bites.
But the banana part probably wouldn’t hold up very well, so I’m trying to brainstorm something else to put in the middle of the mini cookies. Ideally, I’d like to tie the dessert in to Halloween, too. Maybe spider cookies? With pretzel legs… Or maybe I should abandon the cookie idea and just go with cupcakes. Kids seem to love cupcakes above all else.
Do you think stereotypes are sometimes true?
I think that some are based on truth. Like Asians being smart? I’ve been blessed to know many amazing Asian friends, especially when I lived in China, and they are all very smart. My one friend—who ended up at MIT and now works for the government—actually fell asleep during the English AP test and still got a 5! (EDIT: Please read my responses to some of the comments below. Your comments made me realize that my words above–although meant as a compliment–were misguided.)
However, I don’t understand other stereotypes at all. I think the “Mexicans are lazy” stereotype is the most ridiculous and offensive one out there, because I have never met a more hard-working ethnic group. And I would like to go back in time and clock the person who first uttered the phrase, “You hit/throw/run like a girl.”
And now, since I know you’ve all been wondering only one thing throughout this entire post, I’ll answer the important question: No, I did not have beer for breakfast 
. I managed to find an apple hiding in my friends’ kitchen, to tide me over until I drove home.
Then I threw together my favorite Pumpkin Breakfast Cereal.
How lovely to see a well-stocked fridge!
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
Hahaha I think some stereotypes people actually try to fit, which can be quite annoying!
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! 🙂
When someone says you run/hit/throw like a girl, you simply smile graciuosly and say ‘Why, Thank You!’. Or you could be snarky and say ‘jealous much?’. 😉
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
Yes! Agreed! Katie doesn’t say that her blog is about politics or sociology or being politically correct. She shouldn’t have to worry about every tiny little word she writes, JUST in case it offends someone.
(And just so no one says I’m a biased American or anything, I am actually Taiwanese, so I know first hand about the pressures of being Asian. Are we judged differently? Yes. Is it fair? No. But you know what? Life isn’t fair. And also, it works both ways: sometimes teachers grade us more EASILY because they are subconsciously inclined to think our essays are good simply because of our heritage.
I really don’t see the need for a lecture, especially from commenters who don’t normally bother to comment unless it’s to say something negative :(.
So then Katie shouldn’t have brought it up.
Why is that simple concept so difficult for people to understand? When you bring something up ON THE INTERNET and you invite comments, you WILL get comments and they may not all agree with you and think you’re a special snowflake… how is that hard to *get*?
Katie is such a sweetheart. She also handles herself very well, but most importantly her recipes are great….. this is after all, a FOOD blog!
Katie, thank goodness you chose to keep your blog! I loveeed the frosting!
Agreed! This is a FOOD blog! And people who only come out of lurking to say something negative should try leaving a GOOD comment every now and then. As Thumper would say, “If you can’t say something nice…”
All this stereotype drama aside, I can’t believe no one’s said how beautiful you look in that photograph. Gorgeous! 🙂
Congratulations on your new digs – there is something, and I don’t know exactly how to define it – that is so freeing about being able to fully express yourself in your own home. EVerything about my home is me, me, me… and that is what is the most wonderful feeling of all – being in my own skin in my own space. Happy housewarming!
Sorry, but this whole post just annoys me. If this is your food blog, it would be great to keep it that way… it really irks me when bloggers try to start some sort of “intelligent” conversation about who-knows-what when their JOB (the one that pays them) is to blog about food. Obviously, I get that you can do whatever you want on here, but don’t get surprised when people call you out on things that are outside of your expertise, especially on something that is so personal for everyone.
Totally agree. I don’t read your blog regularly (sorry, I just can’t deal with all this low calorie stuff), but if photography and food blogging is your thing, stick to it. Don’t start asking random questions about something like stereotypes and race. Everyone is going to have an opinion about this and I can’t help but wonder if you ask questions like this just to get hits since you say this is your “job”.
Seriously, Eden and Julie? If you don’t even read Katie’s blog, don’t you think you have some nerve to assume her reasons for asking certain questions and even for saying what her “thing” is? I’ve been a reader of Katie’s blog for a LONG time, and I can tell you that she always likes to throw discussion questions into the mix. And her regular readers appreciate it and love the discussion that ensues. Not everyone just wants to talk about food all the time. One thing I really love about Katie’s blog is how three-dimensional the content is. It’s not just a bunch of recipes.
So please don’t come in here and try to ruin a nice atmosphere for those of us who really do enjoy being open-minded and learning from others’ comments.
Also, I think it’s kind of sad that you don’t even read this blog, yet you took time to leave a snarky comment.
If you like the discussion, then why how is my opinion “ruining” the atmosphere? I’m not trying to be mean, I just noticed there are lots of other commenters so she shouldn’t be surprised that not everyone is agreeing with her. If this were a “mean” spirited comment, I’d probably not have the guts to post as myself.
discussion that she solicitied is perpetuating some VERY misguided viewpoints from both herself and other readers — “hard-working Mexicans,” “smart Asians,” “dumb Caucasians” and “ghetto blacks” among them. She spreads this poison while claiming she is a college graduate and has done a bit of traveling/studying abroad??
And for the record, Deb, I have read this blog… I come by to check out her recipes instead of ingratiating myself by defending her and instead offering the advice to stay within her niche, since she doesn’t know what she is talking about and has obviously offended a lot of readers, minority or not.
P.S. As an Asian-American, that “model minority” thing bugs the heck out of me… please don’t assume all Asians are well-off financially and academically. Kudos to the commenter above mentioned that a lot of Southeast Asians, for one, struggle more circumstantially and are beaten hard by this stereotype threat. A personal peeve of mine, since I am among that group.
Eden: I just find it offensive that you would assume things about how this blog is run when you don’t ever read. And also, I don’t see anywhere on this post where Katie has said she’s surprised people don’t agree with her. The opposite, in fact. She handled differing opinions with tact and open mindedness, which is much more than most people will do when faced with opposing views. I have a lot of respect for how she was open to changing her original opinion.
Julie: Katie already apologized for offending people. What more do you want? Are you so perfect that you never make a mistake? Well I guess maybe you are. I’m not, and I doubt anyone else besides you is. So I hope you someday share your perfection secret with the rest of us.
I’m sorry for my negativity here, and I won’t be posting any more responses to you both on this post or even looking back. Like I said earlier, I value the positive atmosphere on this blog, and I fear my responses here are only contributing to bringing it down. I’ll be moving on now.
I grew up as a white girl in a mostly white, very small midwestern town. We had one black family in our town. We had a small population of mexicans, a few south/central americans, and like 3 asian/mixed families (mother asian, father white). Yes, my town was small enough that I could actually tell you how many of those families there were in town.
I heard a lot of things growing up, offhanded comments that people didn’t realize were completely not okay. I remember it bothered me, but I didn’t really take as much offense as I do to them now. I was told I had “N***er lips”, there were some kind of nuts that people called “N***er toes”. If someone was told to do something, I’d hear them come off with the smart aleck reply of “I’m white in America” implying freedom based on being white. I could go on and on about it. I think that the majority of people saying those things were just ignorant and not really hateful. But ignorance doesn’t get a pass.
I moved away from there, into a more diverse city, and the only men I’ve dated since (not by exclusion, just by coincidence) have been black men. I began to appreciate a culture that I knew nothing about, apart from the Cosby Show, growing up. I have fallen in love with this culture. My current boyfriend and most likely the man I will be marrying, has done so much in educating me about race. He’s open and honest about the issues in the area of race, and talks about it mindfully and intelligently. It has opened my eyes to so much that I didn’t realize.
Stereotypes are damaging. Comedians make a lot of money by joking about them, but it’s not funny. It separates us. It labels us. Have I laughed at “stuff white people like”? Of course I have. But should I? No. Because it doesn’t help unite us as human beings. It drives the wedge between us.
Ignorance doesn’t get a pass. We live in a technologically advanced age. There’s no reason for anybody to not be educated about the role that race plays in our everyday lives, and how other races have been unfairly labeled and judged because of the shade their skin is. There’s no excuse for lack of awareness. Not anymore.
Bravo.
Ditto the Bravo.
if u dont like what she has to say, and go ahead and misinterpret everything in the worst possible light, well the x button is right there n u can live off gruel and stale crusts from this day foward!