Not Yet Vegan

Okay, so, it's hard to blog against type but I'm going to try really hard to break out of the role I've cast myself in on this here internet and be less of the problem and more of the solution.

No wait, too egotistical, which is not blogging against type at all. I'll just go with "less of the problem" and see where that leads.

So first, I do ask forgiveness from my vegan readers because I do get it and I know it's hard to be vegan in a carnivorous world and I will get there and be one of you (hopefully with a more helpful flies to honey approach?). I imagine there are vegan substitutes for the ingredients in the recipe I'm about to share but I also imagine they are very expensive.

Sincerely, kudos to vegans who walk the walk and even more kudos to parents who do.

Anyway, I have an issue with anxiety that turning sixty has exacerbated instead of alleviating, made worse by current circumstances that I'll probably blog about in future, and since I know that being kind generates kindness, it is a sin for me not to at least give it a go.

One vox populist at a time.

I'm starting out small and somewhat indirectly by blogging a recipe, I know.

One of my favourite books in young adulthood was "Heartburn" by Nora Ephron, and I've loved books interspersed with recipes ever since. But I've been in a book club for twenty years or so and my reading is pretty much down to whatever the book that month is plus something by Jane Smiley, The Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones.

If I die before finishing the LotR it won't be a moment too soon, by the way.

And I really don't want to read book five of GoT but I will. They're really good, captivating, but ugh.

The rest of my reading is online, how to be a better person yammerings and echo chamber political blather, except for the Saturday Globe and the most pretentious section of a newspaper ever imagined, Pursuits.

It's absurd, really, so I decided to make use of it and try the odd recipe because who am I to pretend not to be even more absurd, and last Saturday's was a cheesecake recipe that I modified a bit, but not much, because I'm going to pretend expense is no object for the next year or so when it comes to baking and cooking.

It's a cheesecake recipe so it calls for a springform pan, but I have never really understood why a springform pan is necessary. I do have one, however, because I used to be a middle-class homemaker living in the suburbs in a four bedroom house with a car and a husband and three kids and a dog.

Use whatever pan you have, in other words, and press a mixture of 1/2 cup melted butter, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1 cup flour, 1 cup rolled oats, and pecan pieces into it and bake for 10 or 15 minutes at 350 to set the crust for the cheesecake filling.

Cool.

No seriously, let it cool.

Now mix two packages of cream cheese (ugh, butter and now cream cheese and the dairy industry is a tough one, you're right, vegan readers) with 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/4 maple syrup (I have to insist to my pauper readers that you splurge for the real deal even if you have to go without caviar for the next week or so), two eggs (okay, vegan readers, maybe you should just skip this blog entry), and a 1/2 cup of organic grass fed yogurt that if you're like me you should never buy unless you're making several cheesecakes within a two day period.

Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes.

Partway through cooking put pecans on the cheesecake around which you plan to cut slices, which you'll want to be slim because it's cheesecake, not rice cake. I will not be responsible for people feeling uncomfortably full. Cheesecake is an indulgence, deserved, of course, but an indulgence all the same. I know I felt like a Lady Rockefeller eating my slim piece.

Also, I cooked down frozen mango chunks to have with it but next time I'll cook down frozen blueberries and make a topping for it. I'll place the pecan pieces close to the edge and fill in from them with the blueberry topping.

There. And I can tell you that instead of feeling worked up after blogging the above, I feel useful and accomplished and if not kind, closer to it.

I also feel a little worried that I might be sued by the woman who does the recipes in Pursuits for adapting it a bit but not so much that it isn't plagiarized, so please if you know her tell her to be kind and not do it.

Thanks and you have an awesome day!