Justin and I went to our good friends’ wedding this weekend in Lawrence, Kansas. Our friends are Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones fans so they decided to have elements from both series in their wedding much to our delight! For example, when it was time to exchange wedding bands, the groom relinquished The Ring to Rule Them All he was wearing by tossing it into a mini fuming paper mache-looking volcano two groomsmen brought out just for the occasion. And as is the wedding tradition in Game of Thrones, the groom draped his bride in a necklace and a fur cloth bringing her under his protection. Instead of a unity candle, the couple mixed two different types of wine they had made themselves, and at the end of the ceremony, the couple got on horses and rode off into the sunset, or perhaps in this case, the parking lot. Later on in the evening, they had a wooden catapult robot made to launch the bride’s garter for the garter toss. Needless to say it was a cool wedding. The wedding was also a mini college reunion for me, as many of my college friends and their spouses and members of the fraternity house I used to frequent were there.
It was a little surreal being back in my college town after eleven years. I was astounded to see what had changed since I’d been there. Restaurants that were new when I had lived there had since gone out of business. Old staples of the town had been replaced by new trendy stores and coffee houses. Sometimes I wish I could bottle up places and people in a time capsule so that I could revisit them periodically for nostalgia’s sake. But I recognize that most of the change is for the better. Other places around Lawrence looked completely unchanged like much of the campus itself. And downtown, I saw many familiar faces of people from my past—one girl had lived on my floor in the dorms, and I ran into the man who was the assistant orchestra conductor in the short stent that I was a music major.
Well, you can’t turn back time, but you can make this delicious multi-layered cheesecake. I took it to work, and within an hour, it was gone. The bottom layer is homemade graham crack crust, the middle layers are made up of the regular and pumpkin cheesecake, and the top is the crunchy cinnamon streusel. It’s an impressive dessert, and if you are inclined to share it with others, it travels well. I feel like you can’t go wrong with cheesecake, ever, but this version is especially good. Before you begin to combine the ingredients, keep in mind the cream cheese needs to be at room temperature and that takes a full hour. And then once out of the oven, the cheesecake needs a couple hours to set. Enjoy!
the speckled spork 