he likes to give them some sort of holiday gift and food gifts seem to go over
very well, year after year. The first couple of years he worked here, I bought
tons of Hershey Kisses and wrapped groups of them in individual cellophane bags,
each with a big bow. And then Josh had to go and find each member of the
maintenance staff, whether or or not they ever set foot in his office or even on
his floor. This took him a day and a half and this didn't make him happy.
Last year I decided I was going to make a huge plate of fudge and Josh
could then leave it in the support staff room for everyone to share. The
fudge was a huge hit - and a huge pain to make. And with all the winter holidays
converging on one week this year, I don't really have time to make a ton of
fudge. So this year, we went with m&m cookies.
I found these mini holiday boxes covered in candy canes and gingerbread men
on clearance, perfectly sized for my cookies. And why were holidays items
already on clearance? They aren't. I bought these last January and packed them
away for this year in my Chanukah decorations bin. I had totally forgotten about
them and then when I opened the bin the other day, they made me so happy.
So here goes with the m&m cookies. Buy a big bag of red and green
m&m's*. Mix a batch or two of your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and
add m&ms instead of chocolate chips. And yeah, then you're done. How easy is
that?
I tripled a batch of my chocolate chip cookies, baking with my five year
old this past Sunday. He mixed, he ate some m&ms, he threw some into an
almost empty seltzer bottle to see if they would melt (they did) and we bonded.
*I went looking for red and green m&m's the last time I was in
Shoprite and I couldn't find them anywhere, which I thought was weird because
everything else in the store was red and green. But okay, I knew Target would
have them, so I wasn't worried. At the checkout line, I asked the cashier if the
store had any red and green m&m's, hoping to save myself a trip to Target.
She said that it was the weirdest thing, but those m&m's didn't come in to
the store yet and I wasn't the only one asking for them. And then, as she is
scanning the many bags of Chanukah gelt (chocolate coins) that I had in my cart,
she asked me why I needed the m&m's if I was also buying gelt, but before I
could answer, she asked what she really wanted to know which was what's
the story with all the chocolate coins. It seems that her son came home from
public school the other day with a bag of Chanukah gelt, singing a song about a
sivivon (dreidel in Hebrew) all in Hebrew. He had no idea what it meant, she had
no idea what it meant, but all her kid knew was that he really liked these
chocolate coins and he wanted more, and oh, his music teacher in school is
Jewish. Such a funny world. And it's times like these that I am always reminded
that I really am an ambassador for Jews everywhere. Treating someone kindly,
with a smile, saying thank you, all tiny little things that one can add to their
day and yet all are major kiddush Hashems right there.