The Stars and the Cookie Jar

1. You know how you know you should get treated for whatever, you know it would be better with pills and your quality of life would improve, but you put off the pills because of cost or routine or whatever?

Yeah, that was just stupid of me.

I'm on this new stuff, Hyzaar, for the good of my valves, and it's fabulous. I've been taking it for two days and I can see my ankle bones. My hands are smaller. I sleep better. No more pounding headache all the time. I have energy. There's an unpleasant diuretic side effect, but I'm told that goes away. And even if it didn't, I'd probably be willing to work my life around always having to know where the public washrooms are. Because I haven't felt like this since I was seventeen or eighteen years old. Maybe I've never felt like this, and I just feel like I'm eighteen years old. It's great.

2. I'm trying out the New York cheesecake in The Best Light Recipe. I was deeply skeptical, as it omits half the cream cheese for labneh and cottage cheese puree, but damn, going from the taste of the unbaked filling? They got it right. It's an easy recipe, and it would have come together in about half the time it took me if only I had borrowed God's own food processor. As it was, I had to process ingredients in batches and combine the batches in the stand mixer bowl, but that was minor. (I think a 16-cup food processor would do it. We only have a 6-cup.) It tastes foolproof. Waiting now to see how it bakes up. In theory, from its formula, it should work -- it should hold together -- and if it does work I will be massively impressed. I'm also impressed with any cookbook that tells you to stick an instant-read thermometer probe smack in the middle of the cheesecake and live with it.

So how's things by you?