I saw this hanging on the wall at an estate sale, with a $5 sticker on it.  Can you imagine trying to sell your kids’ elementary school artwork — is nothing sacred?  Who knows, maybe there is a market for such stuff?  Let’s see, I’ve got some of my daughter’s artwork that might interest y’all.  Here’s a sample of her cowboy art:

Perhaps something from her Degas period might appeal to you:

This one is my personal favorite, which I could never part with at any price:

Then there was the dark period — we’re still trying to figure this one out:

In any event, I’d be willing to bet that the cowboy picture was drawn during that time of year in Houston when everyone’s a cowboy — the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, which is presently upon us.  Friday was Go Texan Day, the day the trailriders thunder into town, the barbecue cook-off starts (a full weekend of smoke and debauchery), and the rodeo season officially kicks off.  My newsfeed was filled with adorable pictures of my friends’ kids and grandkids in their cowboy couture.  I got kind of verklempt thinking back to the days when I used to dress my kids up for Go Texan Day.

Inspired by the child’s cowboy drawing and all the Texas-ness going on around me, I set out to make a Texas cookie.  The one that kept popping up in my searches was Laura Bush’s Texas Governor’s Mansion Cowboy Cookies (rather pompous sounding, don’t you think?), her entry in the 2000 presidential cookie contest.  The inane contest began in 1992, when Hillary Clinton rattled a number of women with her comment that “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas.”  Family Circle magazine seized on this and came up with the contest, pitting HIllary’s chocolate chip recipe against a classic one from Barbara Bush, and asking readers to vote for the winner.  In 2000, Laura Bush’s cookie beat out Tipper Gore’s gingersnaps.

This recipe for Texas Governor’s Mansion Cowboy Cookies makes a huge batch of very stiff dough — you might wind up mixing in the chips and nuts with your hands, as if you were making meatballs.  You can follow the recipe and make Texas-sized cookies by scooping out the dough with a 1/4 cup measuring cup, but we preferred them regular size, using 2 tablespoons of dough.  There’s some debate about how long to bake them.  I baked them for about 16 minutes, and they came out golden around the edges and crisped up as they cooled, which we preferred over ones that cooked for a shorter time and were softer in the middle.

At first bite, we did not love these cookies.  But they were vastly improved the next day, to the point where they were really good — crunchy and packed with goodies. Come and bake it!

Stiff dough requires a lot of elbow grease

1/4-cup scoops for giant cookies, 2-tablespoon scoops for normal-sized cookies

Golden and crisp from the oven

You can make them Texas-sized, or the size that the rest of the U.S. enjoys

Bang bang eat ’em up