Turtle Cheesecake: The Mark of an Adult
I was a bit different as a kid. I mean compared to other kids. You see, I actually liked some vegetables better than sweets. I suspect that many of you parents might be wishing that you had a perfect child like I was. My preferences might have been related to the reality that my mother kept me on baby foods until I was twenty-eight. In retrospect, I now recognize that none of the [major babyinfant] food companies pour a pureed serving of a fudge brownie into a small glass jar.
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. Into one of those piles would go everything that was made by the generous Mrs. Robertson. Immediately after sorting, that pile went straight into our garbage can. My mother was sure that Mrs. Robertson let her eighty four cats walk all over the counters in her kitchen at will. My mother knew this because Mrs. Robertson’s sister-in-law had told her this (both the number of cats and the freedom that those felines were given.) 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. The only time I ever was allowed to have candy was when I visited 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. 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. But to my mouth that was primarily accustomed to pale brown meat in almost liquid form and thoroughly mashed green beans, it was heavenly.
Some years later, as I went through my gastronomical adolescence, my recreational use of foods helped me to realize that cheesecake didn’t really taste like cardboard, as my first experience had led me to believe. (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! 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.
The saddest part of this story is that I don’t even know how to make 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 do know how to use a blender, though, because I watched my mom prepare the Thanksgiving turkey one year.
Author’s notation: I may have taken some creative liberties with slight exaggerations here and there, but I’m not concerned about being caught. My mother is still not sure what the Internet is.
