Just catching up on the days

I'm not sure where the minutes have gone, but I do know that if I don't make a few notes here, they will slip away from my mind faster than chocolate chip cookies do from my kitchen.

Today Madam B and I finished the task we started yesterday. That would be a major one of painting the food pantry closet. We removed all the things in the pantry, vacuumed, washed and painted walls and shelves, covered the shelves with contact paper ~
-- (and that was a nightmare as I have never bought contact paper that was crooked before!),
but long story short, it's all together again, and it looks so clean and shiny!

I have lived in this house for 22 years and have never painted that pantry. So now, it's done.

I also made a great pot of soup, and a lovely cheesecake! Oh such an easy cheesecake, too!
Here's the story of the cheesecake -- I made some chocolate chip cookies yesterday, and I used my food processor. I wanted to make the cookies with half whole-wheat flour and half white, but I forgot. I forgot about adding the whole-wheat - Anyway, I have never used the food processor for cookies before and I think I shant ever again. They just were too softish and would not stay together. Although they tasted most wonderful and fattening, but they would not stay in the form a cookie!

So, I decided the what-had-come-out-of-the-oven-stuff would make a wonderful bottom for a cheesecake! I looked on line and found this recipe for Black Forest Cheesecake. Very basic -- There are several on line, but don't be fooled! This one is so easy! (I shall post it at the end). So with my handy dandy food processor, I whipped up the cheesecake, and Madam B had prepared the crust for me in my spring form pan, that my sister gave me in 1989, and I only first used it a couple of months ago, popped it in the oven for 45 minutes and it just tastes of professional quality!

So what else? ~~

I'm reading Johnny Tremain and Twelfth Night right now because Madam B is - and we are still reading The Scarlet Letter - Oh, that poor Reverend Dimmensdale, what pain the tortured soul must endure – I will be happy when we are finished with this book. I don’t think it’s a book to be labored over.

I am concerned about losing school time soon. Next week my in laws are coming, to visit and have Thanksgiving with us, and we are going to attack the project of a major cleaning of my kitchen cabinets (there are a lot of them). And I'm going to continue to go through my cupboards and get rid of things I've collected, for heavens knows what reasons we collect and keep things. Well, sometimes, like the spring form pan, it takes a long while for its use to be recognized in your lifetime.

Madam B and her dad have gone to see Harry Potter and the something of something. I don’t keep track of Harry very much, but they seem to like him and all his antics.

I’m waiting for Pride and Prejudice to open at a theater near me. I’m hearing it’s enjoyable! I’ve been reading it on line, jumping from part to part ~ I think I will read the book. I never have, as I’ve never liked ‘chatty’ books. I didn’t enjoy Little Women, but I did like the story and the movie.

Well, that’s a skimming ~ reading this will be a prompt to remember my life and this day ~ Every time I say This Day, I think of Aragon (Lord of the Rings - I think Return of the King)

Black Forest Cheesecake

1 cup chocolate wafer crumbs
3 tablespoons margarine, melted
16 ounces cream cheese, softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips, melted
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 (21 ounce) can cherry pie filling
Frozen whipped topping, thawed

Combine crumbs and margarine; press onto bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 10 minutes.

Combine cream cheese and sugar, mixing at medium speed on electric mixer until well blended. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Blend in chocolate and extract; pour over crust. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes. Loosen cake from rim of pan; cool before removing rim of pan. Chill.

Top cheesecake with pie filling and whipped topping just before serving. Spoon pie filling to within 1 1/2 inches of edge of cheesecake. About every three inches around the edge, place a dollop of whipped

JUST SO YOU KNOW – I used fat free cream cheese and vanilla extract AND I poured out half the cheesecake mixture before I mixed in the chocolate chips, so it had a duel effect. Very cool beans!

~~~A thought for today~~~

So divinely is the world organized that every one of us, in our place and time, is in balance with everything else. ~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe