aintgotenoughgravy

Well its been a while since I showed up and I apologize for that but life and its various worries got in between me and you. It’s good to be back, I hope you feel the same. As some of you know my sweet little dog Schoochie (official name Shelby Lou) tore her ACL in her right knee, and had to have surgery a week and a half ago. This followed a month of a STRAINED ACL, same knee, in which we had to restrict her activity and watch her like a hawk. Apparently we didn’t do good enough, her little playmate, the attic squirrel showed up, she gave chase and pretty much annihilated that sucker. I say all this to say, she was like a newborn 45 pound baby that Keith and I had to tote about and down the steps and wake up with about 15 times a night for about a week until she got the “3 legged I can do this Mom” attitude and did it on her own. Geeze, I LOVE that Beagle dog, she is the light in my day when I can’t seem to find a glimmer of hope, there is so much to be said for  unconditional love. I truly believe that  our pets, especially dogs, are more that just pets. We underestimate their importance. The evidence is all around us, they are our working companions and our protectors. They are now being used to help people who are diabetic and alerting them when their blood sugar is too low. They are being trained to find cancer long before any current tests can detect it. Keith (my husband) told me about a lemon Beagle in Miami airport that was a member of the customs search team. He saw this little guy on one of his working trips to the Bahamas just as the Beagle found some illegal substance and alerted with that Beagle Bugle resounding through that vast airport, then the little guy gave a high 5 to his co-worker. Mr Lemon Beagle is now quite famous, he is often featured on a TV show about Miami Airport, I’ve seen him a number of times on that show. I kinda feel like I knew him when….

Schoochie got scramble eggs for supper last night. Yes, I cook for my dog, especially if she isn’t feeling well. I don’t really need an excuse to cook although there are times I don’t feel like it. But I had rather not eat, than eat something that tastes crappy, I am not saying I haven’t done it, I’d just rather not. If you get it in your head that you are going to feel like poop after you eat that fast food meal it keeps you from eating all that sugar and bad fat and salt. A hunk of good cheese and a banana with natural peanut butter tastes better that that. I am not a skinny person, I don’t obsess, I have spent my life needing to lose 20 pounds or 30 pounds or well, you get the idea, the numbers like age just go up from there. I just want to put good things inside of me and the people that I love. I was in the grocery store on Sunday looking for a pork shoulder to make Carnitas for my family, and this lady turned to me and asked had I ever cooked one of those pre-packaged, pre-seasoned, packed in odd looking goop, pork loins that apparently you can actually throw in the oven still IN the plastic and cook it?And did I like it? I thought she was lying. Cook it in the OVEN in the PLASTIC?

No, I have never done that. I don’t actually buy stuff that is pre-seasoned because it is usually full of sugar and salt and chemicals and God knows what else, and the idea of cooking something under actual HEAT in plastic, makes me think we have taken “get er done fast” way too far. Again, NOT in the microwave, in the OVEN! Call me old fashioned I don’t even drink out of plastic glasses, can’t stand the way it feels. So I explained to her, after she asked of course, how was I going to cook my loin (they were out of shoulders).

Take it OUT of the plastic, rinse it off, dry it off, salt and pepper it really good, sear it off on all sides until its crispy brown on the outside in a burning hot skillet with a bit of olive oil, throw in in a roaster, and roast it off at 350 until it forks apart. I didn’t even go into the whole Carnita recipe. When I said sear it off she looked confused. But I will share my Carnita recipe with you, is it authentic? probably not, but it was damn good and VERY easy, and it makes a bunch so you can have leftovers.

Start with a 6 pound pork loin, or if you are cooking for 2, cut this recipe in half. Obviously if you are cooking for 20…. I’ll let you do the math.

Do to the pork loin what I said above, put the olive oil in the skillet not on the loin, it needs to be dry, just salt and pepper, caramelize it in the skillet on ALL sides even the ends. I had to cut my roast in half. Stick it in a roaster, fat side up, like a turkey roaster with a lid, set the oven on 350 to preheat, then…

Take one onion about the size of a baseball, I used a white onion, peel it quarter it stick it in the food processor, add 3 to 4 cloves of garlic peeled and crushed,about a half cup of fresh oregano, I put the stems in also, remember this is supposed to be easy, 1/4 cup or cumin, and the orange only part of 2 large oranges, rather than zest it I peeled the skin off with a vegetable peeler and just stuck it in the food processor. Whir it up until its chopped small.

Take the naked oranges and cut them in half squeeze the juice on top of the loin. put the oranges down in the roaster with the loin, Take the good goop from the processor and pat all that good stuff on the top and sides of the pork loin in the roaster, yes it kinda falls off but try. Slice a jalapeno into little rounds and stick it on top of the loin, I used 1 but you could use 2, WARNING!!! do not put the jalapeno in the food processor unless you want really HOT pork. Roast it in the oven at 350 until fork tender about 2 1/2 to 4 hours. The smell will drive you crazy.

once its done, Cut big hunks and serve it on warm flour tortillas with sauteed peppers and onions and good salsa and fresh guacamole. Happy belated Cinco de’ mayo!

I love being wrong for really good reasons.  As y’all know I went off on a rant a few weeks ago. A rant about people not stepping up and doing the right thing. Boy was I wrong. That was PRE Boston Marathon Bombing, I refuse to call it a tragedy. That does not give the event enough weight or sobering reality. The word tragedy sounds like an accident, it is too far removed from what I think most people are feeling about what happened. Yes it was tragic, but it mostly was horrific and unnecessary. But it happened as a lot of things do these days, out of the blue and beyond reason. AND this is where you get to hear me say I was wrong, A LOT OF PEOPLE DID THE RIGHT THING!!!! I was wrong. And saved lives because they did the right thing. I was wrong and I love love love that. People stepped up and kept the wounded calm and kept them from bleeding out and carried bloody broken mangled bodies to get them help. These people stepped in, human to human with a generosity of spirit, that showed their absolute human kindness at great risk to themselves, not knowing if they would be next. All humans. All Kind. I am grateful for the faith they restored in me, the faith in my community of humans, most of us actually do the right thing, most of the time. As for the 2 young men who beget the absolute chaos of pain and death and lives altered forever, I can only wonder what went so wrong that they ended up here in hatred.

What is it about freshly ground,fresh brewed coffee that is so damn good? You take those dark brown, almost black, oily little beans and dump them into a grinder and then mix with filtered HOT water and yum, deep rich oil slicked coffee. About a year ago, at my husbands insistence we bought a mac-daddy magic coffee machine. Now, I am pretty low tech when it come to kitchen stuff, I prefer a good sharp knife and a cutting board to some whiz bang food processor, the knife and the board are SO much easier to wash and generally faster, unless you are cooking for like 20 ( or more) people, but this coffee machine is AMAZING. Yes, its a pain to wash but sometimes its just worth it. You open the top and take out the grinder which also has a tight fitting lid, put the beans and all of their oily goodness (by the way if your coffee beans are NOT oily you are missing the boat) in this little grinder and pop it back in, fill the well with filtered water and close the top. You open another door and pull out the filter basket, put a filter in (if its already clean, mine usually isn’t) put it back and close that door, stick the clean carafe back in and hit a button, it grinds the coffee, dumps it in the filter, whooshes the HOT water through it and freakin’ yum, COFFEE!  It is loud, especially at 4:30 in the morning when my husband gets up, but hey marriage is all about sacrifice, right? I said all this to say (and I hope he reads this), HE WAS SO RIGHT!

Speaking of right, in the past few weeks I have had occasion through my various friends, in 3 separate instances, to ponder why exactly it is, that most people no longer speak up or stand up and do the right thing, even if they believe its the right thing, because they don’t want to get “involved”. I have long held the belief that there are basically 2 types of people in the world, people who do the right thing and people who do the right thing for themselves, no matter the cost to others. It seems simple when it’s all black and white like that, doesn’t it? I have also held the belief, perhaps naively, that the former outnumbered the latter….it may be, that I have been wrong. I really hope not.

Example…. if someones child (by the way that’s all of us) could be hurt, emotionally or physically by the actions of another person isn’t it our obligation to step in and try to make it right? Especially if our words or actions could make a difference? What of our own children? How would we want someone to respond if it were our child? Would not “doing the right thing” be what we would want someone else to do? Even a stranger? but especially a friend or a brother or sister or a neighbor?

Sometimes it takes making a little noise, going against the crowd, stepping up, pissing a few people off along the way. Many years ago when I was working in Chattanooga Tennessee with a friend of mine on a blistering hot August day that literally melted the asphalt, we were sitting in an air conditioned Kinkos, working, when my friend Mary said, what is that noise? (it was someone revving their engine) but it persisted… getting louder, I finally looked outside and saw a rather large man having full blown convulsions inside his really small car in the parking lot, his foot jammed on the accelerator. I yelled, CALL 911 and ran to the car hoping the whole time that he had not locked his door. My yelling had an effect, not really the one I had thought it was going to have, as I yanked open the door, the people began to gather and stare, I turned off his car and this really large man had wedged himself up between his bucket seats because he was convulsing so violently, his head had dropped backwards which resulted in his tongue blocking his windpipe, there was sweat and spit everywhere, the car was as hot as a gas oven on high. I grabbed his shirt and pulled him forward, grabbed the back of his head and tilted his head forward, thinking the whole time HOW was I going to get him out of there if he needed to be resuscitated? Fortunately his tongue fell forward out of his throat so he could breath again. Looking up for help, I saw one of the Kinkos guys was standing there trying to figure out how he could help, so I told him to open the other door and fan the guy, ordered someone else to get a compress of paper towels and cold water and I started to try and cool him off by putting that on the back of his neck and his forehead all the while trying to hold him upright so he could breath. Mary had immediately called the EMT’s, but by the time they got there he had stopped convulsing, and was breathing almost normal, but still really out of it. As I stepped back to let the EMT’s in I saw at least 40 people standing there NOT helping, just talking and pointing, some of them laughing, but not coming close enough to even try and help. The Kinkos guy and his co-worker stepped up, thank God. It was just a heat stroke, but it could have killed him. Would it have made a difference had the convulsing guy been a white guy in a nice car instead of a black man in a predominately white area? Maybe…but that is a truth about the south that still persists, and will as long as we pretend it doesn’t. That was an immediate instance to make the RIGHT choice, its pretty easy to do that when danger is being played out right in front of your face. At least for some of us.

Whats not so easy is the decision to step in, alert authorities, if a neighbor is doing a dangerous activity that could get someone killed, perhaps even his own children. I am speaking of the man in NC, that was digging an earthen BUNKER in his back yard with a backhoe while at the same time his child and her cousin 6 and 7 years old went down into the bunker to retrieve a toy pickax and the unsupported walls of that bunker collapsed killing the children. The guys neighbor had told his own teen aged daughter who babysat the children not to go anywhere near the bunker, because it was DANGEROUS but did he think to call someone and say this idiot next door is going to get someone killed with his gargantuan hole in the ground? Seemingly not. I think the Dad should be charged with 2 counts of reckless homicide, the neighbor will hopefully lose sleep THE REST OF HIS LIFE because he DIDN’T do the right thing. This was not a tragedy, this was not an accident, this was willful negligence! On both their parts.

Look, I know I am preaching here, but its who I am, its where I come from, its my childhood growing up years that formed this ironclad moral streak in me. Its my Granny showing me how to care for others, how to feed them and how to treat everyone the same no matter the color of their skin, or how they choose to worship, or how poor they were.  That might sound strange as I am a Southerner born into the segregated delineated South, but I never saw that South, I only saw what was in the home I grew up in. I only got to see that awful South when I was older, but by then I had already formed who I was and what I believed, thanks to my biggest influence, Thelma Godfrey Eaker. She was a giver, a kind strong soul who worked very hard to make it as right as she could make it for everyone who touched her life. If someones house burned and they lost everything, she pulled out the best linens from the cedar chest to share. If someone needed food she took wonderful canned goods she had put up and anything fresh she had to offer. If a child came to our house to play and he had holes in his shoes, we all went to the dime store and we all got some shoes so he wouldn’t be singled out and feel poor. And if she saw someone who wasn’t doing right she stepped up and tried to make it right or called someone (usually my Uncle Russell at the sheriffs department) who could. In turn she touched many lives with her strong and generous spirit. After she had come to live with us in Tennessee in our tiny home, after she had an aneurysm and was sometimes fine and sometimes not so fine she would collect loose change around the house to keep in her coin purse so that when the ice creme man came around she could buy ice creme for ALL the children in the neighborhood. Word got around that she would do this, and daily, kids would just start to gather up in front of our house about the time he was expected with his Calliope music playing and his bright colored truck. Most of these kids didn’t have a Granny or a quarter. But she told them all to call her Granny, and she provided the quarter. She also provided an example of giving that stays with me to this day.

I know it isn’t easy to make the decision to step in, I get it! That’s what the police and the firefighters and the EMT’s do, its their job. But human to human…its our job too! Its a generosity of spirit that we need these days, its a willingness to be a part of this community we call humankind. All Humans. All Kind. That sounds like such a good idea.

My son was over here for Supper (as opposed to Dinner) last night. Yes, there is a distinction, at least in a southerners mind. He commented upon the number of critters that I keep in my household, but hey, its cheaper to feed them than pay a psychiatrist. And as y’all know I love to feed. I have 3 cats and a dog, I really want a puppy as a companion to my Beloved Beagle, Schoochie, but I am not ready to house train again. We have a kind of part time dog who comes to my house when she runs away from home. Her name is Maggie, and she is a scamp, she is a huge boxer mix so big that when she stands on her hind legs her paws are on my shoulders, and she generally shows up outside my bay window in the kitchen, early in the morning, because she knows I am sitting here drinking coffee and writing. I swear she comes around the corner looking for me. And yes I feed her, that’s why she comes here first, but it keeps her off the streets. She’s here now. I let her in, she eats, then goes in the back yard to run and play and jump over Schooch. Schooch puts up with this behavior for a bit then she starts to get insecure that maybe I love Maggie more than her, but that is not possible, although I suspect Schooch loves my husband Keith more than she loves me, even though I am the one who rescued her skinny little self from the wilds of Gatlinburg. But the person Schooch loves most is my son, Nathaniel. He has a way with all animals. He actually gave her her real name, Shelby Lou, a true southern beagle moniker if I ever heard one. Schoochie is her nick name , yes we all have nick names here, south of the Mason Dixon. My other critters are Joe Elvis(Joejoe), a black cat who is the color of a faded black velvet painting of the King. Stoney (Stoneman, he looks stoned, like Dude, most of the time) my huge gray fluff ball of a cat, that my niece Kayleigh scared to death when he was a kitten and she was still crawling, he’s still scared, she’s thirteen. And lastly my solid black cat, a fierce little female, named Lily Pearl White, she is Schoochies best friend. She takes after me in her attitude and follows Schooch around like her shadow. They give me someone to talk to, besides myself. Oh I almost forgot, there is the mob of wild birds that throng my tall oak tree in the back, and the holly tree/bush that is right outside my kitchen window. At last count we were at about 50 to 100 birds that hang around and sing to me, the cowbirds that sound just like water gurgling, so much that I though I had a water main that was leaking, the Gackles, tall aristocratic black birds that shimmer blue and purple in the sunlight, Blue jays, Robins, Cardinals, Carolina Wrens, Sparrows, Titmouses (would that be titmice?), black headed finches, sometimes gold finches, a particular Mocking Bird who is almost my pet, I think he is the one I saved one time when he flew in my house, he seems to know me. Lastly my covey of Mourning Doves, sweet and gentle, they mate for life, and I love their soulful song. Sometimes I get ring necked Doves that are almost white, but they act regal and hold themselves apart from the other birds. And there is the red-tailed hawk, he visits my aviary for lunch sometimes, but has never been successful as far as I know.  I am a critter person, my Granny was a critter person, she had a really soft heart where birds and animals were concerned, my son is a critter person, he can’t stand for a lost animal to go hungry or unloved. I don’t know how people live without animals in their lives. My best friend Shelly lives without animals, but she still talks about her sweet Basset Hound, Linus, although he’s been gone for years. I never met him and I have known her longer than I haven’t. I forgive her this tiny flaw, otherwise she is perfect and a perfect friend, she forgives me my considerable flaws…daily. People always think we are related, possibly because we are both cushy southern women that give you something to hug yourself into. Or it could be our green eyes…nah, its the cushy thing. We of course, got that way because we love good food, but really who wants to hug a skinny, bony woman? NONE of the men in my life.

As for the food part, Shelly and I are always discussing what we ate where, or cooked, or discovered that made something taste even better. Most of my friends are foodies, I love them for that reason alone. I feed them whenever I get the chance. I have a special cake I am going to bake for a friends birthday in April, yes you will get the recipe, it is my 7 hour coconut cake, and my friend Dr. Greg who tries really hard to eat sensible, had I believe, 3 pieces of it one night at another friends birthday party. Its so full of fat and calories and so damn yummy its a good thing it takes 7 hours to make, I would weigh 300 pounds.

It was actually spitting snow this morning as the sun lightened up the sky behind the grey clouds. Snow in March, soup weather! Several years ago, I had a chicken tortilla soup at a fancy restaurant that wasn’t bad but I just knew it could be much better. It was basically just cheese and chicken with skinny fried tortillas on top. I was thinking more of a soup that could be a total meal, with veggies and chicken. This is what I came up with, it is my husbands favorite, especially when he has a cold, it’ll clear you right up, cause its spicy. I always make a bunch and have leftovers, which yes, gets hotter as it sits. This makes a VERY large pot of soup, but really is there any other kind? A small bowl of soup just pisses me off.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

1 or 2 large bags of white corn tortilla chips to eat with the soup

1 bunch of fresh cilantro to serve on top to add that freshness

3 pounds of chicken breasts cut in half lengthwise so they cook faster

4 large boxes of low sodium chicken stock, I like my soup soupy, you can use water and bouillon cubes, I just can’t find any without sugar

1 large onion chopped

1 red bell pepper chopped

1/4 of a jalapeno or 1/4 poblano pepper seeded and chopped (if you don’t like spicy use the poblano or just leave these peppers out)

salt and red pepper flakes

2 cans Ro*tel tomatoes (I get the chunky style, original spice lever, I have made it with the medium level but to each his own )

1 15 oz can Hunts fire roasted chopped tomatoes

2 cans Bush’s seasoned black beans rinsed and drained (please rinse well otherwise it turns out an ugly color, my husband like lots of black beans so sometimes I use 3 cans)

3 cans Niblets yellow corn or frozen corn (3 to 4 cups)

16 to 24 oz shredded sharp cheddar if you like it cheesey do the 24 oz

12 oz (1 1/2 cups of sour creme)

1/2 cup of flour

saute the onion and the red pepper with a bit of salt and a 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes in the bottom of a large stock pot until tender, dump in the chicken stock, the Ro*tel tomatoes, the fire roasted tomatoes, bring to a boil, drop in the chicken pieces and lower the temp some, simmer until chicken is done, stirring occasionally, usually about 20 minutes. take the chicken out and put on a plate to cool down some. While the pot is still simmering put in the shredded cheese and let it melt in the stock. Put the sour creme in a medium bowl,  Blend the flour THOROUGHLY into the sour creme, add about a 1/2 cup of simmering stock to the bowl, blend that in thoroughly then add another 1/2 cup and blend that thoroughly (this is the hardest part, I swear and yes we are tempering the sour creme mixture), SLOWLY add the now warmed sour creme mixture into the simmering stock, stirring well to blend it in, if you have done this correctly you will have no little floating balls of dough on top of the stock, if you haven’t… get out the immersion blender and blend those little suckers in trying not to blend all the tomatoes into pulp, or just act like the little floating balls of dough are supposed to be there. I have done it both ways. Keep the soup at a simmer but stir it often at this stage as it thickens up to a creamy consistency, it also tends to stick so watch it. Once that is blended add the cans of corn, the rinsed and drained black beans, shred the cooled chicken and add that back in, let it simmer another 5 minutes or so, check for seasoning, get a LARGE bowl for each person and serve it up with white corn tortilla chips instead of crackers, extra sour creme dolloped on top and fresh cilantro chopped on top. I might have to make some tonight, yum.

Ok, time to take Maggie home, she’s asleep on the rug, Schooch however, kinda has a pissed off look, up on the couch. The cats? No where to be found.

I love good food! Food that is prepared by loving hands. Food that is as fresh as possible. I haven’t knowingly eaten canned soup in decades, nor would I consider using it. And I love soup, I do use canned or boxed broth just to get a deep flavor when time isn’t on my side. I think that soup is so easy to make, especially with canned broth, it is my go-to gotta get supper ready in a hurry meal. Bake up a cake of cornbread with it and zippity-do-da suppers ready. I recently made a really good cabbage beef soup with hamburger, canned whole tomatoes squished, half a head of cabbage, a box of vegetable stock, a large yellow onion and a can of cannellini beans ’cause its what I had in the cabinet. It was REALLY good, good for you and it came with an added gift, leftovers! I do try to stock my cabinets with certain things most of the time, boxes of broth is one of those things, canned black beans, cannellini beans, canned tomatoes and Ro-tel tomatoes. All those things can be put together really fast to help make a good soup. Some fresh vegetables and some chicken or beef and supper is on. I have a couple of soups that make the cold wet weather that we have here in Tennessee more bearable. One is my corn chowder, a friend of mine had talked about her corn chowder for years, but I never ended up with the recipe. Years ago when I was working really long hours in retail I had gone to pick up my son at my Mama’s house and she asked her usual question, Honey are you hungry? I was, but I said I would get me something. So I proceeded to look in her cabinets and refrigerator. Grabbed the celery out of the crisper, part of a bell pepper, some sour creme, a can of Hormel canned ham (the kind that is the size of a tuna can) a box of chicken broth, some grated cheese and 2 cans of corn. Sauteed off the chopped celery (you should always have celery on hand it makes ANYTHING taste fresh) threw in chopped bell pepper for a few seconds to soften up, dumped in the ham after I squished it up to cook off the gelatinous stuff its packed with, then the chicken stock, brought it to a simmer then added about 4  to 6 oz. grated cheese (let that melt into the broth),the cans of corn, about a half cup of sour creme mixed with 3 tablespoons of flour blended into it (this friends is a wonderful way to thicken ANYTHING, I learned it way back thanks to an old McCalls cookbook and making lots of beef stroganoff, just make sure to blend the flour WELL). And 10 minutes later, corn chowder! It was pretty too, all yellow, pink and green. A crusty bread is good with this, that first night my son came in my Mamas Kitchen and asked what I was cooking, I said I didn’t know but did he want some? Then three of us sat down to a big bowl of really good corn chowder. I have perfected the recipe since then, red bell pepper instead of green, extra sharp cheddar, fresh corn when I have it but good frozen corn when I don’t, but the basic recipe is still the same. Mama asked me that night after she’d eaten 2 bowls where did I get the recipe for it, I said I’d just made it up from what she had in the cabinets, she told me to write it down for her, so I did and now I am writing it down for you. I never did get my friends recipe for corn chowder but I like mine so much I no longer care. Good quick easy supper! The best part is that people will think you have been cooking for hours.

Sorry I was gone from the blog so long, I had some other writing commitments to take care of, but I am back and will be here from now on, God Willing and the creeks don’t rise!

As a parent you walk through many things. Some things you crawl through, on bended knee in constant prayer. From the second your child appears in your life you realize that now you are second, sometimes third or forth or fifth depending on how many children you have. I am reminded daily how important that unconditional love is. I had it from the wonderful women that raised me, my beautiful Mama, my extraordinary Granny and my amazing great Grandmother, Mimi… I never had it from my real father. Yes, that formed a hurt in me that I pick at now and then, like you do a sore tooth. But the basic strength I got in those first years have helped me to walk down my path with my son. Sometimes I crawled, making deals with God along the way, begging him to take me instead. But we made it, Nathaniel and I. I’m ready to crawl and beg again at a moments notice. Its the path you unknowingly choose when you become a parent. As I have said before, those women in the first five years of my life, are my touchstone, the souls that keep me upright or at least enable me to stand again, once I have been knocked flat. I have been knocked flat… a few times. I have crawled my way back to an upright position… a few times. Being the touchstone for my own child has made a world of difference to my son. It gave him the strength to deal with two life threatening illnesses and to walk out the other side. Not surely, unscathed. But no-one gets out of childhood unscathed. We just need to get out of childhood well loved. I was well loved. My son is well loved and in turn is a kind, loving and generous man.

So, for my dear Friend Judy, and her daughter Katie and sweet little Evan, you are in my thoughts and prayers, it takes so much giving to be a good parent, and so much strength, but I know you have it. Judy, your evidence is your 4 wonderful fully “growed” children. Katie, I know you have it in you because your Mom is such a wonderful example, and Evan is such a sweet child. Evan will be a kind, loving and generous man, and the long view is, it will all be worth it, as hard as it is to crawl through today and the days to come. I send you love, I send you strength.

When my son was diagnosed with Leukemia before he was three, my heart felt like a giant fist were going to squeeze the very life blood out of me. But the doctors had answers, pretty good ones, as it turns out. I don’t remember them telling me about the 40% chance. It wouldn’t have mattered, he was going to survive. I asked what could I do? They sent me the nutritionist, a really helpful lady who told me he needed 5000 calories a day. And if I could do that, he would do so much better with the chemo. He was already a good eater, but 5000 a day is a lot for a child that weighted 30 pounds. This was long before nutrition shakes and powdered supplements. But whipping creme and ground nuts went in everything I could get it in. You can disguise a lot of things in spaghetti sauce, and he craved spaghetti, I was making 2 very large pots of it each week, usually he ate that at 2 in the morning, I also put broccoli in it ground up, he never knew. He still craved the things children on steroids crave, one day we were at McDonalds 5 times, for a hamburger and fries. But otherwise, he was getting good nutritious food every time he opened his mouth. I had long known that food provided comfort, but it became my weapon against the leukemia. It was the thing that I could control. I could do this to help my son. I became a really good cook. His favorite was beef stroganoff and my cheesecake, lots of calories there. The end result was he never was one of those skinny chemo kids, he actually managed to gain a few pounds. And 4 1/2 years later he came off chemo and has never looked back. He also really appreciates good food.

Once when he was 5, we went to a bakery that a friend of mine opened in Murfreesboro. This was a very sweet man who had made cheesecake one of the specialties of his bakery. I seem to remember we were the only ones there. The owner brought the cheese cake slices out to the table and stood there as Nathaniel took his first bite. Nathaniel’s face crumpled as he slid the plate away, across the table, and announced that it wasn’t very good. My friend apologized and apologized. Then asked me if Nathaniel was used to the Jello kind, I said No, he was used to my kind. He called me the next day and said he’d never had anything get to him the way Nathaniel’s reaction did, it was so honest. He asked for my recipe. I gave it to him. I’m giving it to you, and yes it has lots of calories. Nathaniel’s best friend Adam loves this cheesecake too. So here you go Adam, now that you are in Boston, you can make you some. 

This has a pastry crust, use a 9 inch spring form pan, size matters. I used an 8″ one time to not good results, who knew an inch could make so much difference?

For the crust,

2 cups sifted all purpose flour (sift before measure)

1/2 cup sugar

3 teaspoons grated lemon peel (just the yellow, about 3 lemons)

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 egg yolks

1/2 cup softened salted butter

In medium bowl blend together dry ingredients, make a well in the center add vanilla egg yolks and butter mix together with fingers until it forms a soft ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and put in refrig for about an hour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. grease bottom and sides of spring form pan, then remove sides. Roll 1/3 of the dough onto the pan bottom. Trim edges. bake 8 to 10 minutes until golden. Cool. Put sides back on pan, roll out remainder of dough, cut into strips and press onto sides of the pan kinda mashing it to the edges of the baked bottom. Trim dough so it only comes 3/4 of the way up the sides of the pan. DO NOT bake this until you fill it. I did this once and it seriously slumped. Refrigerate until the filling is ready.

before you start the next part crank the oven up to 500 degrees

Filling,

5-(yes 5) 8 oz. blocks creme cheese softened to room temp(do not use the spreadable kind) Yeah baby, that 2 and 1/2 pounds of creme cheese.

1 3/4 cups of sugar

3 tablespoons AP flour

3 teaspoons finely zested lemon peel

3 teaspoons finely zested orange peel

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

5 large eggs(room temp)

2 egg yolks(room Temp)

1/4 cup heavy creme(room temp)

In a large bowl of the mixer, combine the creme cheese, sugar, flour, lemon and orange peel and vanilla, Beat at high speed just to blend, scrape the orange and lemon peel off the blades and stir them back in. Beat in eggs and egg yolks one at a time on med speed just until combined. Beat in heavy creme on low speed. Get the orange and lemon peel off the beaters AGAIN and stir them back in. Pour in prepared spring form pan.

Now this is REALLY IMPORTANT,

bake 10 minutes at 500 degrees,

LOWER temp to 250 degrees and bake 1 hour longer.

Let cheesecake cool in pan on wire rack, then refrigerate at least 3 hours, or overnight. But really… who are we kidding? If you could wait overnight for the cheesecake you probably are not reading THIS blog.

I like my cheesecake simple! No syrupy topping. That’s an abomination. I didn’t go to this much trouble to only taste the topping, so I serve it plain or at the most with fresh berries.

Fresh…Delicious… perfect for Easter, and only about 500 calories a slice.

I wonder how I could send one Judy’s way….