Pumpkin Cheesecake with Gingersnap Crust

This recipe is adapted from one I found at Allrecipes.com.  Did you know that the old fashioned way to cook a pumpkin is to put it in the oven?  Just rinse it, and put it in the oven, about 350 for an hour or so.  This is also a good way to cook squash.  No fussing over cutting... and this method gives no worries about some of the pumpkin being too done while other parts remain uncooked.  In about an hour, go back and turn it off.  Leave it there.  Let it cool for an hour or half a day.

You can make your own pumpkin puree, and it will taste fresher and more pumpkin-y than canned pumpkin (although the latter is really convenient and less messy).   I use a TV tray for cleaning pumpkin, because it might be too messy for a regular cutting board.  Just slice it into fourths, and use a spoon to scoop away the seeds and strings.  Then pare the skin off easily with a knife.  Cut into chunks.  If you have a food processor, you can whiz it, but don't add liquid.  Another way to puree the pulp is in a mixer for a long time. 

Gingersnap Crust:
Crush and whiz (in a food processor or blender) 1/2 cups of gingersnaps and 1 cup of graham crackers.  You want a fine mix, and I sift mine thru a sifter, because the gingersnaps sometimes don't chop up.  Add 2-3 tablespoons of sugar, and 1/2 to 3/4 of a stick of butter.  I like to put my butter in the microwave for 15 seconds because I rarely have it at room temp when I begin.  This, you press into the bottom of a springform pan.  I don't have a springform pan, so I use a square 9x9 pyrex glass baking dish, a round custard dish or a 9x14 glass pan.  Just put it back in the fridge till you add the filling, and it can be hardening.

Mix 16 oz of cream cheese till creamy, and add 1/3 cup of brown sugar.  Here's where my recipe is a jazzed-up version of the online classic:  While my cream cheese is getting fluffy, I use authentic whole spices that I grind, crush or grate, myself.  I just put those on top of  the pumpkin puree that I will be adding.

I use about a teaspoon of cloves, taking just the buttons off of the top.  (Toss the 'forks' into your simmering potpourri, as they are tough.)  I crush them on an old Cherokee grinding rock using a round Cherokee stone that I found in the woods.  You could use a bowl and pestle. 

I use about a tablespoon of cinnamon that I got when travelling in the Carribean.  If you go South, don't miss a chance to visit a grocery store or town marketplace somewhere like Montego Bay.  You can get amazing fresh spices, whole, and they'll keep for a year or more if you don't refigerate them and leave them whole till ready for use. 

I crushed a fourth of a nutmeg.  That would be about 1/2 teaspoon.

I used fresh ginger root, grating it on a grater... about a tablespoon and that is a lot.

Add a cup of pumpkin puree and these spices, scraping down your bowl edges to incorporate all the cream cheese.

Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla.  Or, you could also use a spoon of Frangelico at this step instead.

You'll get a creamy mix, richer than pumplin pie mix.  Gently pour it into the crust, and pop that into the oven.  Turn the oven to 350.  Add a big pot of water to the bottom to keep your cheesecake moist and avoid cracking.  Cook for 30 minutes or until the edges are puffy and the middle still jiggles.

There's a trick here:  You want to keep your oven steamy, so don't be opening and closing the door a lot.  Treat it like a souffle.

After 30 minutes, turn the heat down to 325, and set the timer for 15 minutes.  Make this topping:

1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon Frangelico

You can use Vanilla if you don't happen to have Frangelico.  (Frangelico comes from the liquor store and some people use it as a coffee flavoring.  It is rather expensive, and has a flavor of hazelnut and berries.)

When your topping is made, gently take the cheesecake out of the oven and pour this evenly over the top.  Avoid moving it around with a spoon if you can, so it won't break into the cake which is still cooking.  Then put it back in the oven, turn off the oven at the end of the timer above, and just leave it there for an hour, in the oven, still cooking but at an ever-lower temp.  After an hour you can take it out, insert a knife around the edges so it will shrink without splitting, and put it back into the cooling oven until both oven and cake are at room temp.

Now, for the hard part.  Cover it with foil and stick it in the oven to chill and set up overnight.  Next day, Eat It.

This is a great upscale recipe for holiday visits, but the cream cheese makes it dangerously rich and fattening.    Once in a while, it won't hurt ya.  Enjoy!  And do post any variations that you try.

The Talking Potholder

"Ouch, This is hot!" said the talking potholder, when she used it to take nice cinnamon bread out of the oven, so it could be drizzled with orange glaze and a handful of chopped almonds.  But really, the Talking Potholder didn't mind too very much, because after all, being a potholder was the only life it had ever known.

Stripey Potholder with Pink

Stripey Potholder with Pink Thingy

Potholder of the Day Club here, delivering your Potholder Eye Candy for Tuesday November 23rd.  For a week now, I've been featuring my hand-dyed funky potholders.  These are little utilitarian jewels of art, ready to take a center stage in your kitchen.  Or, if you kitchen doesn't have a stage in it, then I guess you could hang one of these on the Spoon Drawer Handle.

One-eyed Panther Butterfly Lemon Berry Potholder

I guess this potholder sorta looked like a face, so I added an eye.  The berry-colored fuschia is hand-dyed fabric, and the whole shebang is lined with not only nice cotton but alsy a heat resistant barrier.  You cannot tell it, but it is oversized for easy cookie retrieval.  A potholder in the series called:  Potholder Series.

The Potholder Series: Moccasin Nose

The silliest potholder you've ever seen is this "Moccasin Nose" potholder, made of hand-dyed fabric (by me) and then sillied-up with a reproduction Depression-Era flour sack print. So atypical that Google will have a hard time figuring out what advertisements to put on the page with depression-era moccasins, noses and hand dyed fabrics.  The Potholder Series continues, so stay tuned for tomorrow's mystery.

Color Burst Paris, a Funky Potholder

Today's wee little piece of fun artisan potholder is called Color Burst Paris.  Or, if you wish, Colorburst Paris.  The Paris print at lower left is a reproduction fabric from the Drepression Era.  And that gorgeous piece of color in the middle is one of my hand-dyed pieces.  These are for sale at my Etsy store, so stock up in time for The Cooking Season.

Potholder Of The Buena Vista Social Club

Here's a cheery unique potholder from hand-dyed cotton and lined with heat-resistant batting, for your next meeting of the Buena Vista Social Club.  But you do not have to play salsa in order to enjoy it. 

Berry Leopard Curl Potholder

Cyrus Conrail, Railroad Tycoon Murder Solved

I was just in Eureka Springs because as railroad company nurse, my duties require that I travel where the railroad needs me.  I'm Nurse Saidie Ratchet.  Pictured here with me is Old Roger, after he came into a rather sizeable settlement for injuries incurred while working on the line to Eureka Springs.  We settled into 1881 Crescent Cottage B&B for a Murder Mystery weekend on Friday evening.  Old Roger cleans up purty nice.  When he arrived at the celebratory dinner gala on Friday, he was attired in his dowdy, stinky usual duds, but I took him shopping.

We hobbled all over Eureka Springs looking for clues to solve the murder of Cyrus Conrail, stopping to quench our dehydration at a little underground pub called Jack's.  I implored Old Roger to sing karaoke, to which he finally resigned himself.  Its kinda funny to see a 1908 railroad laborer performing Carlos Santana's "Smooth" with a cane for playing air guitar.  It reminded me of one of the Soggy Bottom Boys from the movie 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' 

It was our first time to stay at a B&B.  And Old Roger solved the mystery!  He also won "Best Male Characterization" for his character portrayal.  Old Roger was part Slingblade, part Joker from Dark Knight, and 100% outsider smart aleck.  I, nurse Saidie, was worried that I had treated Mr. Conrail too rough with my whips and chains 'alternative' therapy a few days before his untimely denoument, but was glad I happened to have my handcuffs with me because they came in handy.  

We loved Eureka Springs, and it happened to be Diversity Week, so there was a wonderfully eclectic crowd in town-- bikers and gays, not the least of which.  I'd love to live among so many artists in a community with so much community spirit.  No place else has so much public arts and aesthetics infrastructure.  We tried a delicious meal at Garden Bistro, a cafe specializing in local food.

Its a Good Friday

Easter this year is a bit of an anomaly.  I always like Good Friday because it is an extra day off of work, and a play day.  I often spend it cooking for Easter or dyeing eggs or tee shirts.

This year, Easter will be different without my mother's touch as family matriarch.  She was a gracious hostess and a good cook.  Most of all, she had boundless energy and never was there a holiday where the cake was not themed, or any such thing.  I, on the other hand, somehow inherited the 'guy' genes in my family consisting of two girls, and usually I'm asked to bring the soda pop.  For years there, relatives told ME that the get-together was an hour earlier than 'real time' because I was habitually late... being the type of partygoer who just starts preparing for the party when it is time to be there.

Maybe I exaggerate.  I've been reputed to bring brilliantly delicious dishes from time to time.  And scarcely mediocre ones at other times.

My best Easter was when my sister lived down the street from my parents on Victor Street, and had 3 girls just of the age to wear wonderful Beatrix Potter empire waist chintz floral dresses with fantastic large sashes.  Back then, we had lots of children of the age to race across the yard in competitive Easter Egg Hunting.  Oh the pink velvet and lace tights!  One niece wore a shirt from her grandfather, "Just Say No To Hollow Bunnies."  We were a large extended family of 5 aunts and uncles, their children and grandchildren.  Every person on Earth should have the delight of such a large, fun, funny, handsome, competent, and loving family.

Nieces and nephews now have grown up and there is an equally charming age cluster of Oklahoma University cohorts consisting of not less than five of them this semester.  Now the darling dresses are replaced by crimson and cream jerseys with the number 14 on them.  (For those who may not know, that is Sam Bradford, OU's former great quarterback and Heisman Award winner, who happens to be Cherokee like all of our OU students in the family).

Invitation

We're debuting a new 3-man combo on Saturday March 6th at KTK Steakhouse in Tahlequah, about 6:30 to 9:30.  The food is excellent there.  I recommend the filet mignon and cream brulee, sweet potatoes and french onion soup.

Dennis Tibbits, Leonard McCracken and me, Fluffy, will be playing.  Leonard jams with us often at Scooters and elsewhere, so we think we'll have a wide reportoire of songs that listeners request as well as some local originals that are pretty popular.

When we play, someone always requests, "Chicken Poop."  I hesitate to even put those words in a blog because internet filters may hide my blogs.  But last week a bus driver told us that all 30 of his bus kids sing that song as they toodle down the dirt roads.  I have this wonderful mental picture of kids growing up to help clean up water pollution to the river because they've heard the simple compelling story in a song.

How to Lose Weight

For years now, I have been wishing to lose 35 pounds.  This would put me at a respectable body mass index and restore my age-appropriate  weight.  I did lose that much under doctor supervision about 8 years ago, but then I gave up flextime for a more standard 8 to 5 schedule, and shifted to less-creative work that kept me pinned down to a desk daily.  Writing, editing, photographing and interviewing on my own production schedule was a better 'fit' for healthy eating habits.  More recently, desk work has been instrumental in creating a big soft natural pillow on my rump.

I could take a lesson from my daughter.  Her husband is a personal trainer and she has taken off 15 pounds residual to her pregnancy and December delivery just in the past two weeks.  She does it by restricting caloric intake and following a muscle-mass building regimen.  So, she's actually losing more than the scales show, since muscle outweighs the fat that it rubs and washes away.

I do best when I can recreate.  Usually at best my recreation is aerobic housecleaning, but best I love hiking, kayaking and playing music.  Each morning I weigh myself and write it down. My weight fluctuates and one can almost detect the day after a double dip ice cream cone, bedtime popcorn or a heavy dinner.  Snacking 5 meals a day is my style, but I cook formal meals now and it has taken its toll, adding 5 pounds every year since I married my darlin' meat-and-potatoes kinda guy.

I'll make this a monthly report to force myself to do better.

Join the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

Several years back on a snowy winter day we held a startup meeting in Tahlequah for Oklahoma Food Coop members who might join in the NE part of the state.  Now today Coop has thousands of members and once a month, from all across Oklahoma, producers deliver to OKC where goods are sorted and go back out to several thousand folks who ordered fresh Oklahoma-made goods.  Producers offer a vast variety of foodstuffs and other useful things.  You can get buffalo, lamb, and in the past you could get rabbit, deer and tilapia.  Great free range chicken is available, plus nice organic meats and veggies in season.  In Summer, feast on soft fruit from peaches to figs.  In winter, you can still get squash and prepared foods which have been put up all year round in waiting for the lean season.

 

Co-op Instigator, Bob Waldrop Checking the Bread at one of our very first Co-op Board of Directors Meetings.  Food is a big part of the Co-op-ing that we do. 

One of the most amazing things about the Coop is that it runs on volunteer labor.  Volunteers do the sorting in OKC and they do the sorting at the delivery sites.  The producers prep their goods and enter their own products online, and consumers buy online a week before delivery.  It is exciting when orders first open, because everyone tries to get there in time to get some of the first dozens of eggs or a limited quantity of fresh butter or heavy cream, greek yogurt, or cowboy cheese, washing powder.  So, I'm opening it up to ongoing discussion, and maybe some of the coop members will drop by and post his or her favorite item.  Today my fave is the shampoo soap, because it makes my hair so soft and curly!  I used to get very expensive nice Aveda hair products, but I can't leave this soap alone.  Today I cooked chocolate bread with the organic chocolate from one of the coffe companies in the coop.  It made for rich bread that is not sweet but very sophisticated in flavor.  I love the coffees too, and shop from all 3 coffee producers each month to stay in stock.  The statewide Annual Meeting is a food and friend-making extravaganza, taking place soon.  If you join in time, don't miss it.  

Details:  Visit www.oklahomafood.coop  Members join for about $50 (one time) and pay each month for their buys, picking up at the closest location of which there are many statewide.

At Oklahoma Food Cooperative, find Fluffy's Compleat Boutique listings for tees and clothing in sizes for adults, children and babies.  You can find quilt tops and quilts made of hand-dyed fabric by artist Kathy Tibbits which are not available any place else.  Some hemp and hemp/cotton tees and skirts are sold via the co-op.  Organic cotton shirts are occasionally available there.  Gourmet kitchen goods from Fluffy's can be purchased at Oklahoma Food, from time to time.  This usually includes potholders or hot pads, and sometimes chef aprons, kitchen towels and dinner naps, placemats, and refrigerator magnets.