Across the Sea: Cheesecake Creations

Monday, January 30, 2012

Cheesecake Creations

Disclaimer, I don't cook. Like, ever. I partly don't have the patience and partly just don't care enough. I am completely content living off salads, snack plates, yogurt, fruit, pasta and chicken. Every once in a while I feel like I should cook something, mostly because people tell me too. But when it comes down to it, all I really want is a good salad with some chicken, or a snack plate...so we're back to square one.

A fancy snack plate.
I like lots of little flavors from lots of food groups.

On top of all that, living in Japan means that common ingredients are obviously different, sizing is different and then there is the battle of actually reading what you're buying. I learned that one out when I bought what I thought were sliced almonds, turned out to be dried slices of garlic. Learned a new word that day.

And just to make things more interesting, I don't have a proper oven. I have a microwave oven. So anything I plan on cooking can't be too big. Baking cookies is a process because you can only cook about 6 at a time, and prior to that I have to research the Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion. Ready to just boil a pot of water for pasta yet?

Prior to returning home for Christmas, my good friend Jeff was luck enough to find someone with a Costco card and a car, opening up our world to the joys of bagels, olives and pumpkin pie. Jeff and I split a big bag of bagels. At Costco he realized he needed cream cheese to go with his bagels, a wise choice. So he bought some from Costco, a poor choice. He then had essentially a gallon of cream cheese. In deciding what to do with the remaining cream cheese, and seeing that we were out of bagels, we decided to make something. The obvious choice being cheesecake.

We had everything in the recipe except a crust. So, after I smuggled two back in my suitcase from the states, we finally got to baking last week. Since I don't trust myself in the kitchen alone, and Jeff had a soccer game, Kris came over and the two of us made two cheesecakes and what turned out to be a cookie cake thing.