TheSnackHound

Ordering perishable food products online can be a frightening process when your mind begins to wander. Images of ice cream melting all over the postal carrier’s bag come to mind for me. In reality, it’s not as painful as one might think. You can actually Order Cheesecake Online without too many mishaps if things are done right.

How do I make sure a cheesecake arrives at cousin Bernie’s apartment safe and sound?

• The fresh cheese cake is frozen, then wrapped in clear plastic.
• Most shippers accustomed to shipping such items pack the cheesecake in dry ice, and then place it in a Styrofoam container. The container material keeps moisture in, but allows gases from the carbon dioxide solids, or dry ice, to escape.
• Two day shipping with FedEx or the USPS, depending on the company or your location is selected. Cheesecakes typically only ship early in the week to ensure that the package doesn’t sit around undelivered on a Sunday, especially in the summer,but check customer service to be sure.

When the cheesecake arrives, place it in the refrigerator or freezer, depending on when you plan to serve it. If you will not consume it within 7 days, it is best to freeze it, since it does contain dairy. You forgot about that, right? I sometimes forget and think they are made of meringued clouds that babies waiting to be delivered sit on. They just are a bit heavy as gravity compresses them as they sink towards the terra firma. At least the chocolate ones with the dark chocolate squiggles on them. If that were so, I’d have been a fighter pilot instead. I’ll have to settle acting surprised when one falls on my doorstep in a basket. Or maybe a box.

Thanks to Jonathon Woods

I think that if everyone could have two wishes in their lives, the first one would be to be incredibly rich. The second one would come in a close second at being incredibly skinny or in shape. They say money can’t buy happiness, but it sure could put a dent in getting there. And then, if you are skinny, you would look good when you got all that money.

Everyone I know is on some kind of health kick these days. My kids and my husband all go to the gym. People at work change clothes at the end of the day and go walking or to the fitness room to work out. I just want to get out of there at the end of the day and go home. Even when I turn on expertsatellite.com, there are shows like the Biggest Loser which is a program about people being in competition to lose the most weight.

I am sorry, but I just don’t see myself ever being on a show like that. I am not super fat or anything close, and I think you have to be a whopper to get on a show like that. Well my kids are always after me to at least go on walks. I could probably handle that OK. But if I start I am certainly not going to tell them about it so they won’t be bugging me to see if I walked each day.

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?