Bulgarian Cherry Cheesecake

Each day I face pain. I know I am not alone in this. Many people face this too, and even worse perhaps. I don’t want this to be the pain blog, or even the pain avoidance blog, but today* the music is playing so loudly I can’t not mention it. I figured the blog could be one more way to get away from myself, get outside myself, as contradictory as that may seem. Anything to take my mind off me is good. Tiny snow is falling. It had melted off this morning but now has resumed. As if it missed itself.

In the meantime, a baker’s dozen of red-winged blackbirds appeared at the feeders, followed by a small sharp-looking army of red finches. The backyard was filled with starlings.

My primary accomplishment this morning was to prepare a beef and gravy dish for the crockpot, so that my hardworking mate will have a hearty meal when he arrives home after dark. To be eaten over biscuits, and accompanied by fresh crispy raw veggies with a homemade buttermilk dressing I got out of The Pastry Queen’s Christmas cookbook.

Nancy Mairs has been much on my mind. I first began reading her in my early twenties. I was nannying in NYC and raiding the library with the lions out front as often as I could. “Remembering the Bone House” was my introduction to her, and even then I knew she spoke for me, and I sympathized with her, though I did not share her MS diagnosis and challenges.

Will this blog be a Search for a Cure? A celebration of all for which I am grateful each day? It is still taking shape, finding if it has a voice, if it has a leg, what is this thing all twisted and wrapped in on itself?

Yesterday I made a cherry cheesecake, topped with gorgeous pale purple cherries all the way from Bulgaria. They floated in their glass jar for weeks and neither my mate nor I could open them. He sprained his hand. I felt I herniated my head. The jar went back in the cabinet. For whatever reason, we did not give up. Yesterday, after a month of trying, they opened almost without resistance. And the Bulgarian cherry cheesecake, sprinkled with brown sugar and cherry juice which made it shine, was delicious.



(*Today is a misnomer, I wrote this perhaps around the seventh, still figuring out blogtime.)