Family Dinners
Birthday Celebration
Oct. 19, 2006


Today is our twins’ (grandkids) third birthday. These three years seem to have gone very, very fast for us and not so fast for their parents.  Twins are an unimaginably different experience from single births.  Anyone who has had children knows how exhausting those early months are.  Twins are simply twice as exhausting.  There are twice the worries, twice the work but also twice the fun and more than twice the indescribable joy.  Now that they are three, things are getting easier.  Their parents are getting more sleep, unless the kids are sick, and the bond between the twins makes for a kind of soothing contentment not available to singles, no matter how attentive the parents.  It is a wondrous thing to see.  Parents and grandparents are often outsiders looking in.  I don’t know for sure but I think it may be a special gift to be a twin.

With the addition to our family of our dear son-in-law, the father of the twins, came a new and welcome ethnic injection to the family tree.  He has a Greek father and Mexican mother.  His parents met here in the US when each of them had just arrived.  He is an only child, she is one of ten children!  So one can imagine how gorgeous these two children are…Greek and Hispanic added to Irish, English, Polish and splash of European Jewry.  Like most immigrants who have come to this country as young adults, our son-in-law’s parents are less likely to take for granted the freedoms and opportunities available to all citizens in this country.  They have not gone through the various incarnations of political affiliation many of us homegrown folks do.  They are rock-ribbed Republicans and always have been.  I have generally found this to be true throughout my life, no matter what country the person came from.  The only distressing thing is how so many of our immigrants are likely to be anti-Israel and to harbor its companion pathology of anti-Semitism.  It shameful, in my view, that so many countries, older countries, European countries who endured Hitler, Stalin and WWII, have done such a poor job of rooting out this international malady.  Now it again haunts this country, so dedicated to multiculturalism and political correctness. Anti-Semitism has become almost fashionable, particularly on the Left, especially in Europe but very surely here as well.  This is a shocking and depressing development.  And it is the one thing that is NOT a credit to this nation.  I wish American Jews would wake up and see that only one party is standing up for them.  The UN is lost to us.  It is the UN of anti-Israel nations.  


Americans, particularly young ones and even especially those in university, tend to see so much of what is wrong with America, they completely miss how very much is right with it.  For nearly two generations now, this has been the business of education, to teach our youth how racist, inequitable, homophobic, patriarchal, and class-based our nation is when the facts are really quite the reverse when compared to other nations. Like so many other “trends,” this one stems from academia and the mainstream media.  Do not send your kids to university if you want them to retain the values you hope you instilled in them!  Put the money that education will cost in the bank, discern what they are good at, and set them up in business instead.  It will be money better spent.  And stop paying for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post.  They are on the wrong side of every serious issue that faces us today.

So there will be a crowd for dinner. But tonight will be politics-free.  I am making everyone’s favorite dessert.  It will disarm anyone with a political axe to grind.

Lace Cookies & Ice Cream Dessert


Lace cookies:
            3 oz. blanched almonds, finely ground
            1/2 C. superfine sugar
            1/2 stick unsalted butter
            2 tbl. milk, cream, or half & half

Melt the butter in a heavy pan.  Add the remaining ingredients & cook, stirring,  until the mixture pulls away slightly from the edge of the pan.  Drop by the teaspoon-full onto a heavy, parchment-lined cookie sheet.  The dough melts and spreads so leave at least 4" between cookies.  Bake 6 - 7 minutes at 375 or until nicely browned.  Slip the paper off the pan and let cool.  The cookies must harden before being removed from the paper.

Assembly:

Soften 2 pints of homemade or best-quality vanilla ice cream.  The ice cream will spread more easily if you beat it a little in a heavy-duty stand mixer.  Line the bottom of a 10" deep pie plate or cake pan with a layer of cookies, cover with a layer of ice cream.  Repeat the process, finishing with a top layer of cookies.  Cover and freeze.


Chocolate Sauce:

    1/2 stick unsalted butter
    3 oz. best-quality bittersweet chocolate (Tobler's)
    3/4 C. superfine sugar
    1/4 C. Droste's cocoa
    1/2 C. cream
    1 tsp. vanilla

Melt the butter and chocolate together in a heavy pan over low heat.  Add the remaining ingredients & cook, stirring, until smooth.  To serve, cut the cookie/ice cream pie into wedges and top with the chocolate sauce.