My Long Path to Nirvana: Turtle Cheesecake

I grew up a bit differently from most children.  I didn’t sneak sweets.  I actually ate only meat, fruit and even some vegetables.  I know that might sound a bit strange to most parents.  My preferences might have been related to the fact that my mother fed me baby foods until I was twenty-eight.  In retrospect, I realize that none of the [major babyinfant] food companies squeeze a pureed serving of a brownie into a glass jar.

I also ate very little candy.  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 my collection into three piles.  I didn’t really get to assign anything to a particular pile; I was mostly an observer in the annual ritual.  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.  That was the pile I ended the night consuming.  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.  As soon as the sorting was finished, my mom hastily took those into my parent’s bedroom.  They never again appeared.  My only tastes of candy came when I visited my one pair of grandparents.  (My other grandparents only tried to give me buttermilk.  I resent cows to this day.)

In defense of my mother, I believe that this sort of behavior is taught in the top secret motherhood school.  I noticed that when my son was growing up, his mother hid all his candy after Halloween, too.  However my wife has never revealed the exact curriculum of this top secret school.

When I became a full fledged adult at the magical age of twenty-nine, I began to learn that applesauce, vegetables and meat in their natrual form do not really have the same texture.  I also discovered the wonders of dessert in the wonderful 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.  In addition, I discovered that cheesecake, the wonder food, actually comes in lots of different flavors.

Dessert is now my favorite time of day. The best way to top off a well balanced meal of two jars of meat, three jars of thoroughly squashed squash and a banana 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.  If you have a recipe for one that doesn’t involve using either a mixer or an oven, please let me know.  I can operate a blender, though, since I took notes while my mother prepared the Christmas ham one year.

Author’s aside:  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.