Mom's Turtle Cheesecake for a Special Son's Birthday

A note to More Time Readers:  I've moved the blog to WordPress and it is now published at moretimeatthetable.com.  Please change your links, favorites, etc.  I'll publish both places for a while, but not for long!  Great thanks to smart, gorgeous daughter Emily Morgan for managing the migration and for being my super-tech.  Follow Emily on fightthebees.com.

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When your children are growing up, if you're a baker (and sometimes even if you're not), you bake a cake for their birthdays.  I wonder if that's still true?  Most of the time my kids' parties were simple affairs---celebratory and fun, to be sure--but sort of cake and ice cream parties for a bunch of their buddies or maybe even just the family and neighbors.

(below:  Sean, a marvelous cook, making his world-renowned pizza--one of my frequent requests.  He's also a fine brewer.  Nice combination, huh?)

Trading Granola for Eggs - My Urban Barter Tale

I was on the road a couple of weeks ago and checking my computer when my I-Spy Radar saw an email with a subject line that had something to do with too many fresh eggs and trading cookies for them.  I try and stay off email a lot when I'm away seeing my kids or on vacation, but I couldn't NOT look at this one.  Backyard eggs just hook me right in.  And, of course, cookies fall right out of my oven.

My siblings and I grew up with fresh eggs; my dad either traded produce for them or shelled out a little cash to his Swedish farmer friend Munson.  When our  parents retired and took it (ha!) easy on a little "hobby" farm,  they had their own chickens and, hence, their own eggs, to say nothing of a garden that produced tomatoes the likes of which I've never again tasted.  When Dave and I visited as newlyweds, we had fresh eggs (fried in bacon or sausage grease) every morning early.  Why would you want anything else?  And why not at 6am?  There, of course, were also biscuits.  With sour cream and honey or molasses.  Unending pots of coffee.