I was a bit different as a kid. I mean compared to other kids. I preferred meat, fruit and even some vegetables to desserts. I know that might sound a bit strange to most parents. My unique appetite may have had something to do with my mother feeding me baby foods until I was around twenty-eight years old. As I think about it, the people at Gerber didn’t produce a pureed version of German chocolate cake.
My candy consumption was also limited. After I would come home from trick or treating every Halloween night, my mother would make me dump my goodies on the floor, where we would both seat ourselves, cross-legged. We would sort them into three piles. In one pile would go the things Mrs. Robertson made. Those went straight into the garbage, because Mom was sure that Mrs. Robertson let her fourteen cats walk all over the kitchen counters. The pile next to the toxic contributions of Mrs. Robertson was made up of any apples and small boxes of raisins that I had been given. The apples were always provided by the two dentists who lived in our neighborhood. Those were deemed suitable for me. I can’t say for certain what happened to the third grouping–the one that contained all the candy, the caramel apples and the popcorn balls. My mother spirited those off to my parents bedroom, and I never saw them again. My only tastes of candy came when I visited my one pair of grandparents. (My other grandparents just read me Bible verses all day, and convince me that God was not particularly enthusiastic about any behavior of a typical child.)
I subsequently learned not to blame my mother for my almost sugarless upbringing. I now know that somewhere there is a hidden school for mothers where they learn to protect their children from all things with a pleasurable flavor. I know this because my wife exhibited the same behavior with our son on Halloween that my mother employed. That was typically followed by a couple weeks of repeated, “Do I look fat to you?” It didn’t take me long to realize that such a question demands a very rapid response; one should not even pause for a breath.
At twenty-nine, just as I was beginning to learn that meat, vegetables and applesauce do not have identical textures in their natural states, I discovered dessert in the form of a gourmet cheesecake. Actually, I now know that the word gourmet is rarely applied to anything that comes from the discount grocery store in an ugly box with a small cellophane peep hold. The cheesecake turned out to be mostly chemicals–delicious chemicals. Remember that my taste buds had been accustomed to the miracle recipes of the baby food makers. To me, the cheesecake was the definition of heaven.
Later in life, as I belatedly went through my experimental wild years, I learned that cheesecake could taste much less like cardboard than my first sample. (Please don’t ask why I know how cardboard tastes.) In addition, I discovered that cheesecake, the wonder food, actually comes in lots of different flavors.
Dessert is now my reason for living! My favorite way to complete a nutritious mean of two jars of beef, two jars of mashed peas and a pureed apple with cinnamon is with a turtle cheesecake. But please don’t tell my mother; she’ll just take it from me.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the foggiest notion of how to go about actually making a cheesecake. Please tell me if you have a good recipe. Make sure that your recipe doesn’t require using either an oven or a whisk. I do know how to use a blender, though, because I watched my mom prepare the Thanksgiving turkey one year.
Author’s remarks: It’s possible I may have exaggerated just a bit here and there, but don’t mention it to my mom. She doesn’t have a computer and thinks the Internet is a type of support stocking. I don’t have to worry about her actually reading this.
