Cheesecake

Image:Romans 12:2

I love cheesecake; I always have. Here are four ever-so random cheesecake stories for you.

My first encounter of cheesecake was as a child. As is often the case when you have young kids, my parents would have friends over for an evening rather than go out. More often than not it would be their friends Jack and Sue. It would be an evening of homebrew and ladies drinks in dainty glasses. Records would be playing and laughter and loud talking would filter up into my bedroom through the floorboards. I liked it when my parents had friends over for an evening. I was too young to be part of it, but there was something quite exciting about it all. That following morning the house would have a new aroma; cigarette smoke that Jack left behind. Egg cups full of vinegar would be placed around the living room working to mask the smell of stale tobacco. In the fridge would be the remains of a cheesecake, that would have been made for the previous evening. It was normally Morello Cherry, sometimes Blackcurrant. It was cheesecake made from a packet with a thick buttery digestive biscuit base. It's association with the previous evening made it somehow glamorous and sophisticated  in my eyes. It tasted divine.

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Years ago, when I barely twenty, I went on holiday to LA with David and his family. We visited a restaurant called 'The Cheesecake Factory'. I can't recall what I had, but the dessert menu was ridiculously extensive and heavenly. Just cheesecake in every variety you could imagine. I wish I could visit again.

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This story goes back probably goes back a couple of decades. A very dear friend of mine had a birthday. He loved cheesecake. A lot. So I went to the supermarket and bought him six frozen cheesecakes of different flavours. He was over the moon. How wacky we were back then.

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Last year David threw a party to celebrate being forty. I played a DJ set that evening. It's something I rarely do, but when I do it is quite enjoyable. I put a hell of a lot of thought in my musical set. It's got to flow, have a variety of tunes and I always like to keep people on their toes by playing the unexpected. I'm sure people expected me to turn up with the Best Of Abba. I started my set with 'The Cheesecake Truck' song by King Missile. It's a somewhat surreal tune that lurks without reason in David's extensive record collection. I just like the fact someone wrote a song about cheesecake.