Karyn's Sopapilla Cheesecake

Here's an oft-requested recipe that's perfect for family get togethers or the proverbial potluck. My friend Karyn first introduced me to this dish, a spot-on perfect dessert with its buttery crispy crust and gooey sweet center. If you're trying to watch calories in the new year, you can use low-fat cream cheese and margarine, but the full throttle version is worth the payback in the gym.

Sopapilla Cheesecake
2 Cans Pillsbury Crescent Rolls
2 (8 oz.) pkgs. cream cheese
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 stick butter
1 tsp. vanilla

1. Spray a 9 x 12 pan with cooking spray.
2. Lay 1 can crescent rolls in bottom of pan.
3. Beat 2 pkgs. cream cheese, vanilla, 1 cup sugar and spread over crescent rolls.
4. Cover mixture with 2nd can of crescent rolls.
5. Melt stick of butter and mix with remaining 1/2 cup of sugar and cinnamon.
6. Pour butter and sugar mixture over crescent roll/cream cheese layers.
7. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

The cheesecake is superb fresh out of the oven, at room temperature, or chilled from the fridge with coffee the next day. That is, if there's any left over.

Enjoy!

Because I Know How to Get This Party Started Right

I'm celebrating the end of the semester--all A's!!! To make this day extra special, I'm going to treat myself to an organic throat lozenge and more ibuprofen. Hooray!

All I Want for Christmas

We're getting a new washer and dryer set delivered today. (Allegedly.) It's our third set in six months. Please, baby Jesus, let fresh laundry be a special Christmas miracle.

Bring Back that Loving Feeling...

Semester's over. To celebrate, I worked for four hours yesterday on my novel and thought, ah, this is what it feels like to be a writer.

Headed back for more...

My son's advice on reliable blogging

His words: "I say at least one incredibly deep thing a day. Just write that down and post it on your blog."

Done.

If only I had an invisible plane...

Sorry for the lapse in blogs, gentle readers, and thanks for your kind reminders to post. School starts for us next week, and I hope to do a better (if more succinct) job of posting here.

We're back from a week in Colorado and I've spent today blazing through emails, bills, laundry, and organizing my fall schedule. I also squeezed in an hour with my new Rosetta Stone software to catch up on French. My son's comment to my day's activities: "Wow. You're like Wonder Woman. Except Wonder Woman doesn't speak French."

So now I'm singing the falsetto "Wonder Woman" theme song, and wishing I had those fabulous golden bracelets...

Summer Reading: Pores and Flies

School's out, for me anyway, and I'm into my self-directed summer reading program. Just finished Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. My edition has a great author interview at the end--he's cranky, but in a good way.

One of my favorite sections in the novel is about writing:

"The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. That's my definition anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies."

Here's to touching life and making pores.