matthearn.com

The number of people that bought my silly April Fool’s joke, or even ALMOST bought it, was surprising. The list stands at:

• Brian
• Jessica (Who bought it hook, line, and sinker, btw.)
• Brian’s mother Carole
• Daryl, sort of.
• Dave, although he won’t admit it.

To be honest, I have to assume that most of my readership is stoned and/or drunk, so I really shouldn’t have been so surprised, but still. I had not predicted this level of gullibility.

This weekend was a good weekend at the Hearn Household, culinarily. Thursday afternoon after I left the gym, I stopped by the grocery store on the way home. We hadn’t been in roughly 3 weeks, so the only foodstuffs we had left at the house was a half a bag of frozen artichoke hearts, two onions, and some phyllo dough. Now we are, dare I say, FULLY STIZOCKED.

Not that this was without trials. Acme had, of course, only 2 non-express lanes open, so I pulled into the shorter one, behind a Muslim woman (in full burkha and veil) and her three uncontrollable sons. This . . . was a mistake. Her understanding of how grocery stores work in America was severely weak; she had one of those massive red grocery carts that look like cars, and rather than pull it behind her into the lane, she just parked it sideways in front of me and carried items from it to the conveyor belt.

Then, she appeared to be paying with a check.

Then, somehow, foodstamps got involved.

Luckily, I was leafing through a US Weekly, or else I might have taken one of her sons hostage (a rather ironic thought, indeed). After a short while, Acme opened the adjacent lane, and I did my usual high-speed checkout; when I left, our veil’d friend was still awaiting some kind of approval for her purchases.

Anyway, now duly stocked, I was able to make my balicious low-carb cheesecake, as mildly modified from a recipe on the back of a bag of Splenda. Here are the steps involved:

• Preheat th’oven to three-fitty.
• Put 5 or 6 whole graham crackers into a food processor and crumb ’em up real grood. Meanwhile, melt 3 tablespoons o’ butter in a bowl. After the graham crackers are suitably crumb’d, add 1/4 cup o’ Splenda in, and the butter, and process it a bit more to mix it up.
• Grab thy trusty 10″ springform pan and spray it with non-stick jaunpiece of some kind, and then spread the crumb/Splenda/delicious butter mixture on the bottom. Congratulations: you have made cheesecake base crust. Set the pan aside.
• Get out four 8-ounce packages of delicious cream cheese (preferably pre-soften’d) and throw all that yumminess in a large-ish bowl. Pour in 1.25 cups o’ Splender. Get out your mixer and start a-mixing until smooth, or until the mixer gives up the ghost because you didn’t soften the cream cheese first, like I did. (Note to self: purchase new mixer.)
• The Splenda recipe calls here to add lime juice and salt, but I don’t like Lime or Lemon items in my sweet desserts, so I’d throw in about a teaspoon of Vanilla and a pinch of salt.
• Add 4 eggs, one at a time, mixing (or hand stirring with great gusto) thoroughly between each egg.
• Pour mixture into your encrusted springform pan, and throw it in the oven for about 50-60 minutes. If you’re smart, you’ll put the pan in some kind of water bath, apparently this keeps the cheesecake from collapsing, although it’s only worked once for me.
• After cake is done, let it cool for about 15 minutes, and throw that punk into your fridge. Welcome to Flavor Country.

I also invented a drink I call the Asperger, which consists of vodka and orange soda. I was hoping to replicate a kind of autistic Mimosa, but mostly it tastes like vodka and orange soda, two flavors that are not meant to be together. I don’t recommend it unless you have nothing else in the house. (I had nothing else in the house.)