TheSnackHound

Somewhere around 150 B.C., our good friend Cato the Elder issued a very long book length missive on cheesecake. Well, not exactly. The complete work, De Agricultura, was about farming and working the land. Cheesecake, which wasn’t called cheesecake at the time, was slipped in their for good measure. He made it by two different methods as an offering to his gods. Apparently, is higher ups didn’t have a problem with cellulite, but they had excellent taste.

So…what exactly IS cheesecake?

According to our esteemed friends at Merriam-Webster, McGraw-Hill and Funk & Wagnalls, cheesecake has two meanings. The original utterance of the word occurred somewhere between 1400-1450, with the second meaning cooked up somewhere in the early 1930s.

From Dictionary.com:

Cheesecake
cheese·cake
[cheez-keyk]
noun
1. Also, cheese cake . a cake having a firm custardlike texture, made with cream cheese, cottage cheese, or both, and sometimes topped with a jamlike fruit mixture.
2. Informal . Also called leg art. photographs featuring scantily clothed attractive women.

My associates would beg to differ.

A: Is Cheesecake really a pie? It fits in a pie pan.
B: No. It doesn’t have fruit in it.
A: I put fruit on mine.
B: Maybe its more like creme brulee that didn’t quite make it.

I doubt if Romulus and Remus were dipping their spatulas into a tub of Philly. Recipes evolve. But in our effort to make things lighter and less fattening, is the item really the item any more, or does it become something new? Can light cottage cheese in a cracker crust really be considered a close kin of Cato’s version, which started out with 2 whole pounds of cheese?  Arteries are better for the innovation, but what can we call it now?

Thoughts?

(At left: One of the newfangled Invicta watches from Bluedial. Water resistant from sob stories to 200m.)

Recently, a friend of mine asked me to spy on her restaurant. She was really a friend of a friend, but she knew I had a mind like a steel trap. Somehow trusted me not to drivel about it to the world on this site. I needed to record the time it took for the staff to notice me, seat me and proverbially get the buns out of the oven.

Normally, I bring my cell phone. It’s pretty covert to pretend you are texting to take notes, but using the stopwatch feature and constantly resetting it looks a little suspicious. What a novel idea–I wore an actual watch this time.

Back in my sales days, someone checking a watch was checking the time, but someone checking twice was marking time. Some of these gestures are lost on folks who only wear watches as an accessory and forget to look at them in favor of a cell phone, or are not accustomed to them at all. My Favorite Guy in fact calls his a “pocket watch.” It’s amazing what happens when someone leaves their smartphone behind or their iPad or UPad or PeePad.

I was able to slip in and make my mental notes covertly while checking my sleeve or glancing down. No one was the wiser about my sweep second hand, especially those in the demographic of folks old enough to be my niece or nephew (of course only if my brother or sister was 20 years older than me).

Next time, I am bringing my Franklin Planner with me. I bet they’ll say “Is that a leather bound copy of Twilight?”

I think I’ll be wearing the old watch more often. I think I’ll get a new one. Sorry smartphone.

The latest dietary trend is using paleo recipes. It’s not exactly “new,” but with even a trendy European restaurant claiming to be “paleo,” it’s gaining steam. What is it really? In theory, it is a diet that mimics what our paleolithic ancestors might have eaten, which consisted of nuts, fruit, fish and raised livestock. It is virtually free of grains, like a low carb diet, but also doesn’t use seasonings, uses virtual no seasonings.

The diet has similar effect as a low carb diet, but how does one navigate the cultural landscape of charity spaghetti dinners and birthday cake? If you are on the paleo diet, maybe you can provide me with an answer of how you did it politely? Candles on a Birthday Steak?

A happy accident is when you meringue an egg to fold into your flourless chocolate cake. You drop your spatula as the cake sits in the oven, and you see it still thickening up in the bowl on the counter. Panic sets in. Then later, you realize you just made a very decadent brownie. Monks tried almost everything in their humanly power to prevent wine from bubbling. Little did they know that the accident of forgetting heralded the invention of champagne. Why can’t my accidents be that profitable?

The history of Champagne is full of intersting trivia to regale your guests with on the next three hour car ride to the restaurant you heard them review on the radio. There will be a quiz at the end.

Brought To By Wine.com, Purveyors of Fine Wine and Champagne

So…according to the 1891 Treaty of Madrid, sparkling wine can only be called Champagne if it actually was made within the province of Champagne, France. If your great-great grandfather had a large operation in Stenay, which is just outside the border of Champagne, he would have been out of luck. His realtor should have been fired.