Organization

My living space fell into ruins the past couple of weeks. It's merely a monthly trend of mine. Things get really tidy and nice. Then they digress into stacks of papers, dirty dishes, clothes, and whatever else amasses. Some of the more disgusting parts of the day were finding some slices of cheese still in their packages beneath a table of mine. They didn't smell but didn't look very appetizing either.

I also happened to spill melted butter a few weeks back. Even though I cleaned it up, mostly, some areas where it had spilled were growing mold. There was also mold growing all over the table in many random areas. I don't know what it is about this place but mold grows so easily. Never seemed like that would happen back home. Maybe there is just a lot more nasty stuff stuff in the air or my place is ancient.

One thing that bothers me is when the kitchen becomes unusable due to stacks of unwashed dishes and general filth. Yet, I let it become like this so I'm living a paradox of sorts. The best part of watching dishes today was that I found a stream online of the Nebraska and Wisconsin football game. I haven't seen college football literally in over a year. While I wasn't watching that much it was still nice to hear the commentary and look over every now and then and enjoy some amazing plays.

I managed to get the whole house cleaned up and organized so that meant I could move on to my real goal for the day, making a cheesecake. I've never made cheesecake but for some reason I had the strongest urge to try. Well, I did see a picture of one on someone's facebook page and got to thinking it might be nice to make one so yeah... Before I could make the cheesecake I had to make the dulce de leche. This makes me think of Alli because of those cookies in Chile she likes. They have this in them. Now there is a lot of controversy on the proper way to make dulce de leche. I chose to stick to a relatively simple plan as I didn't want to spend 3 or 4 hours nursing a can of condensed milk on the stove. Rather I used the oven and a water bath for about an hour to make the dulce de leche. I then moved on to making the rest of the cheesecake.

I baked the graham cracker crust a little too long and almost started to burn. After cooling a bit the smell was better and I decided it might be okay. I then whipped up the cheesecake batter. I should have let the cream cheese become room temperature but I was impatient. I later looked up some tips for making cheesecake and it said over mixing the cream cheese because it's cold can make the cake lumpy. I'll remember that for next time. So I poured the batter into the pan and then added spoonfuls of dulce de leche randomly on the surface. I then swirled it into the batter with the spatula.



As you can see it looks rather tasty as it is. I then baked it for about 45 minutes until the middle was still a little wobbly but the outer edges were more firm. I then shut the heat off and let it sit inside the oven for another hour to cool. I then wrapped it and put it in the refrigerator but soon realized moisture would condensate on the plastic wrap and drip down on the cake. I didn't want that so I uncovered it and used paper towels to blot any moisture off. I then returned it for a nice long sleep overnight. Tomorrow I shall sample the cheesecake and see how successful I was with no prior knowledge of cheesecake making.

I can't wait.