MY BOGGY BLOG: find your way through the murk

What is the world coming to?

(This was an entry written on April 15th, when our system was down, so it never got online, until now.)

I do not understand. Okay, I’m not obtuse, I really do understand why things like this happen. Since when, though, has the Graham Cracker Market changed from 16 oz boxes to 14 oz boxes? I mean, when did they manage to slip this one by me? And now that I know, it just makes me doubt what the world is coming to… sigh.

Today I am making cheesecake, my Grandma Jarosz’s cheesecake, the one she brought to family gatherings at least twice a year for about 50 years. It is baked in a 9” x 13” glass cake pan and weighs about 10 lbs, and the sight of this cheesecake coming the in the door sets my whole extended family to drooling faster than Pavlov’s dogs. In texture, it is a cakey cheesecake in three layers—a thick bottom crust of almost caramel-like graham cracker crust, the middle tart cheesy part, and then more buttery graham cracker crumbs on top. Young kids tend not to like it because of the tartness; as a kid, I would just eat the bottom layer if I could get away with it.

It’s hard to believe Grandma has been gone for 9 years now. When I was in college, I wrote to ask her for the cheesecake recipe, so I have the white card with her wavery handwriting. Shortly after that, I would go over her house to help her make the cheesecake, and it was a good thing I did, because there were a lot of little details that she didn’t write in the recipe, but are crucial to the outcome. Both the graham crackers and the farmers cheese need to be finely processed, and when I helped her she would get out her heavy metal meat grinder, one that attached to the counter, and we would feed the crackers into the grinder, one at a time. And putting the cheese in the grinder was a mess. When Grandma went into a nursing home and couldn’t make the cheesecake anymore, the job fell to me (and it usually still does), and even though I have her old grinder somewhere in my basement, I find the food processor makes this recipe much more manageable. I feel a little guilty when the family tells me the cheesecake is more fluffy than when Grandma made it, but that’s only because of the equipment I have available. A few whirs of the blade and I’m done.

So I’m making the cheesecake today, a familiar ritual, to bring to Easter brunch at my sister’s house tomorrow. I’ve been making this cheesecake for over a dozen years now, and I know, I *know* that graham crackers always came in 1 lb boxes. It is written on my Grandma’s recipe card, a 1 lb box of graham crackers—so how many years is it that she’d been making this cheesecake? And now somehow in the last year or two, those sneaky cracker companies have slipped this one by me. They’ve done it by consensus, too—all the brands had 14 oz boxes. How do they all do this—a meeting, a conference call? A vote? “Graham crackers will now come in 14 oz boxes for the same price as a 16 oz box—all who agree say yea. The yeas have it.”

Sigh. So I made the cheesecake with 2 oz less graham crackers, shaking my head. I know it’s not really that big of a deal, but in a way, it is just another example of how large companies make decisions that affect people’s lives, and how so often they do it in such a sneaky fashion. Memorial Day is around the corner, and gas prices will spike because that’s what those oil companies know they can do. There never is a real reason for it… just because.

So I guess I’ll just go and do what a lot of Americans do in such circumstances. I’ll grumble about it, watch some TV, eat some chocolate eggs….

What is the world coming to?

I do not understand. Okay, I’m not obtuse, I really do understand why things like this happen. Since when, though, has the Graham Cracker Market changed from 16 oz boxes to 14 oz boxes? I mean, when did they manage to slip this one by me? And now that I know, it just makes me doubt what the world is coming to… sigh.

Today I am making cheesecake, my Grandma Jarosz’s cheesecake, the one she brought to family gatherings at least twice a year for about 50 years. It is baked in a 9” x 13” glass cake pan and weighs about 10 lbs, and the sight of this cheesecake coming the in the door sets my whole extended family to drooling faster than Pavlov’s dogs. In texture, it is a cakey cheesecake in three layers—a thick bottom crust of almost caramel-like graham cracker crust, the middle tart cheesy part, and then more buttery graham cracker crumbs on top. Young kids tend not to like it because of the tartness; as a kid, I would just eat the bottom layer if I could get away with it.

It’s hard to believe Grandma has been gone for 9 years now. When I was in college, I wrote to ask her for the cheesecake recipe, so I have the white card with her wavery handwriting. Shortly after that, I would go over her house to help her make the cheesecake, and it was a good thing I did, because there were a lot of little details that she didn’t write in the recipe, but are crucial to the outcome. Both the graham crackers and the farmers cheese need to be finely processed, and when I helped her she would get out her heavy metal meat grinder, one that attached to the counter, and we would feed the crackers into the grinder, one at a time. And putting the cheese in the grinder was a mess. When Grandma went into a nursing home and couldn’t make the cheesecake anymore, the job fell to me (and it usually still does), and even though I have her old grinder somewhere in my basement, I find the food processor makes this recipe much more manageable. I feel a little guilty when the family tells me the cheesecake is more fluffy than when Grandma made it, but that’s only because of the equipment I have available. A few whirs of the blade and I’m done.

So I’m making the cheesecake today, a familiar ritual, to bring to Easter brunch at my sister’s house tomorrow. I’ve been making this cheesecake for over a dozen years now, and I know, I *know* that graham crackers always came in 1 lb boxes. It is written on my Grandma’s recipe card, a 1 lb box of graham crackers—so how many years is it that she’d been making this cheesecake? And now somehow in the last year or two, those sneaky cracker companies have slipped this one by me. They’ve done it by consensus, too—all the brands had 14 oz boxes. How do they all do this—a meeting, a conference call? A vote? “Graham crackers will now come in 14 oz boxes for the same price as a 16 oz box—all who agree say yea. The yeas have it.”

Sigh. So I made the cheesecake with 2 oz less graham crackers, shaking my head. I know it’s not really that big of a deal, but in a way, it is just another example of how large companies make decisions that affect people’s lives, and how so often they do it in such a sneaky fashion. Memorial Day is around the corner, and gas prices will spike because that’s what those oil companies know they can do. There never is a real reason for it… just because.

So I guess I’ll just go and do what a lot of Americans do in such circumstances. I’ll grumble about it, watch some TV, eat some chocolate eggs…. And blog about it.