Naming Things

If you are a computer scientist, you may believe that naming things is a hard thing, but I, for one, believe it's one of the best parts about owning things. Much like a computer scientist who didn't get the memo about how hard it is, I have invented a set of rules for the things I name, so that naming things feels both organized and fun—like a game!

Let's play a game right now. Can you guess the rules by which I name my plants? My palm tree is named Paula, and my plumeria is Mary. My Tradescantia zebrina is named Sabrina, and my aloe vera (all thousand of them!) are named Vera.

Did you pick up on the pattern? Houseplants all must have a feminine monikers that somehow reference their species or common names. The only exceptions are my Jamaican cacti Denise and Denisette, who are named in honor of their ancestors' propagator from several decades back. While I usually reach for the lowest-hanging fruit when naming a plant (my Eve's pin bears the uncreative name "Eve"), there are definitely a few outliers that stretch the limits of convention. My Phalaenopsis (which I can just barely keep alive and hasn't bloomed in the four years I've owned it) got called "Billie"...the Orchid. And my lemon tree, through some inventive arranging of letters, is called Melany. Some of my plants still don't have names, even though, by rights, they should be christened after a year in my possession. What girl's name sounds like "Huernia," and how will I ever name that weird fern until I get motivated to try and figure out what it really is? I guess I could just call it "Fern" and be done with it. The nice thing about giving plants the names of girls, is that so many girls' names are names of plants!

Naming of phones, on the other hand, is a trickier matter. Do you name your phones? I never hear people referring to their phones by name, but you have to give them names if you want to be able to differentiate them in the app store and on your home network! My phone-naming system got started when I got my first cell phone, a Motorola StarTAC, and subsequently called it "Stella." It was a nearly mindless choice, but it set me on a path that defines how I name my phones to this day! When I retired Stella, I once again made a mindless choice and named its replacement "Stella 2." I think I stopped naming phones for a while because I don't remember a Stella 4 or 5 even though I went through four other phones between 2005 and 2012, but there was definitely a Stella 3. I think I was amused by the banality of bothering to give each phone a name, while not actually bothering to give it a new name.

But by the time I got my first Android phone, I knew something had to change. It had to have a real name. A unique name! A name that honored the grand tradition of naming my phone "Stella," while also not being "Stella." I decided to stick with the celestial theme and name my phone after a constellation—a constellation that, cleverly, also reflected the phone's type, just as the original Stella had. I named it "Andromeda."  And from then on, the rules were set. I must name my phone after something celestial, and the name must somehow reflect the model or type of phone being named. I forget most of the titles I gave my devices after Andromeda, but I do remember being pretty proud of naming one Sony Xperia, "XPerseus," and less proud of naming one Google Pixel, "Pyxis " (I had to do some research for that one—it's a tiny constellation that can't be seen from the Northern Hemisphere). My Samsung Galaxy devices are already celestial by virtue of their model names, so I expanded the rules a bit and allowed them to be named after any characters from Greco-Roman mythology even if they don't have a corresponding constellation. So the tablet is called Galatea, and the Z-Flip is called Zephuros. How will I further stretch the rules as I name my future devices? Let's hope we don't have to find out any time soon, because I'm contractually obligated to keep Zephuros for the next three years!

Other goods that tend to last longer than three years also get convention-guided names, albeit with less frequency than my constant array of new plants and phones.

I named my first car "Zoot," (mainly because I wasn't allowed to give that name to a cat), my second car "Korg," and my third and latest car "Moog." Although I never formalized a set of rules for such vehicular appellations, it is clear looking back that my cars must have one-syllable four-letter names.

My bikes, of which I've also named three, get vaguely nature-adjacent names that give a nod (OK, more like an obsequious bow) to their colors: Greenie, Snowflake, and, my new acquisition in just the past month, Midnight—a magnificent steed in matte navy blue.

The only things I name with some regularity but without rules are my pets. Is that too Wild-Wild-West? Should I establish a system? I'd consider it for the sake of consistency, but I also know it would take the adventure out of the final frontier in nomenclature. Sometimes having rules makes naming things feel like a game, but too many rules might make it feel like nothing more than hard thing in computer science.

Raw Green Tomatoes

 

I have a confession to make. I think tomatoes are gross. 

They are soft, squishy, things that, when provoked, burst unexpectedly and assail your mouth with a stream of slimy seeds. When even the slightest bit overripe, their flesh decays into a grainy, watery paste. When cooked, they collapse into mush and take on a pungent undertone that somehow always reminds me of vomit.

I never liked tomatoes, but as I grew up, I felt the pressure to expand my palate and eat the nasty slimeballs. I started with tomato soup, which, I discovered to my surprise in high school, was really good with grilled cheese. Then in college, I began allowing a few tomato slices to be added to my sandwiches. Now, as an adult, I put them in recipes when recipes call for them, and have even started growing them in my garden!

This puts me in quite a dilemma. How does a person who thinks tomatoes are only tolerable in moderation, deal with a whole crop of tomatoes darkening her doorstep all at once? Honestly, why would she make such a stupid growing decision in the first place!?

The answer to both those questions is this: she eats them green. And not fried green. Just plain old, straight up, green. And she likes them this way.

For learning that I can enjoy eating raw green tomatoes, I credit this one guy that I dated for a few months last year. One day, I was visiting his house where a crop of tomatoes was growing in pots on the patio. A green one had fallen off the plant. He handed it to me and asked, "Do you want a tomato?"

Well, he and I may not have lasted long enough to get engaged, but at least, to this one question, I said yes! Never one to turn down free food, I took the tomato home and cherished it. By which I mean, I let it sit around while I procrastinated. I figured I'd eventually cook it in the traditional way that one cooks green tomatoes (fried). But my favorite thing to cook is nothing at all, so it is not surprising that the future fried green tomato remained unfried.

Eventually I realized that this tomato's fate was not to be found in the bottom of a skillet, and I was going to have to get creative (read: lazy). I cut the tomato into slices and ate them.

And thus began a new era in my culinary life! The green tomato was much tastier than its ripe counterpart! It wasn't mushy or gritty but possessed a firmness more along the lines of a cucumber or bell pepper (which, by the way, is another vegetable that I have recently learned to appreciate). And its flavor was subtle and tart—none of that confusing semi-sweetness (Hey, are you a vegetable or a fruit? Pick a lane!)* that always throws me for a loop when I eat a red tomato.

This is how all tomatoes should be—taken before their prime and devoured without remorse!

This year, the most successful crop from my garden has been the tomatoes (in spite of my pitiful failures at supporting the plants. Turns out tomato cages are one of those gardening luxuries that might be more of a necessity!). And they've been a steady and reliable source of roughage in my diet for most of the latter half of summer.

By now, I've turned green tomato eating into an art. Every few days, I head out to the tomato plants and give each fruit a gentle tug. Any that falls off is mine to take and transform! I bring them inside, cut them in half, and scoop out the guts. This step is vital, because the seeds in their slimy matrix are one of the grossest things about tomatoes, and the flavor is mellower when the seeds are removed. 

 

Then, because as hollowed-out semi-spheres, they are difficult to bite into and weirdly off-putting, I cut them into bite-sized strips. One more rinse to get out any straggling seeds and slime, and then they are ready to eat! 

 

Even the dog wants these tomatoes! 

But the dog can't have these tomatoes because the last time the dog ate a fallen green tomato, the dog returned the fallen tomato (only slightly less green) back to its original location about 30 minutes later. I guess dog digestive tracts are not made for green tomatoes.

This brings me to an important point about the edibility of green tomatoes. I have some hazy recollection of being told that they are poisonous, which is why people don't eat them raw, so—after eating green tomatoes as my only side dish for several meals running—I decided to double-check. Better late than never, I guess? Multiple sources all confirmed: unripe tomatoes do contain several toxic compounds, but they are in low enough amounts that you'd have to eat a vast quantity of green tomatoes before they would make you sick. A lethal dose is apparently 300 tomatoes, so it's extremely doubtful my little tomato patch is going to kill me. I put more poison into my body every time I drink a margarita!

So yes, my raw tomato consumption will continue unabated until the last underdeveloped fruit has dropped off my last scrawny stem! And then I'll start all over again next summer!

 

 

Insomnia: One Year Later

Today, I stumbled upon my "Watch Later" playlist on YouTube, which I hadn't touched in over a year. One of the videos on it jumped out at me – a Qi gong routine for better sleep by Lee Holden – and I recoiled mentally in distaste. Now I have nothing against Lee Holden and his Qi gong videos, but having insomnia traumatized me. And apparently so did the videos I used to try and escape its thrall. 

Well, today, I deleted that video, and all six of the other videos on the list, every one of which was somehow related to insomnia or getting better sleep. That part of my life is over. But the video was a reminder to look back and consider how far I've come.

On this day last year, I wrote a blog post about insomnia, claiming that my sleep had improved a lot, but sometimes it regressed. On this day this year, I can say the very same thing. After all this time, I still can't trust myself to sleep reliably.

But fortunately, over the course of the year, the bad nights of sleep have become fewer and farther between, and I have noticed more and more patterns that contribute to them—making them less of a terrifying mystery and more of a minor inconvenience I can work around. I'm still an annoyingly sensitive sleeper who is inordinately affected by changes in bedtime routine, stimulants, ambient light, ambient temperature, bodily sensations, and her emotions. But not (and this is an exciting development!) by ambient narration.

Oddly enough, having a voice yammering in my ear has become one of the more useful tools in my sleep arsenal. My boyfriend suggested the idea to me, as he routinely plays YouTube videos on aeronautical engineering and other dense topics to help him get to sleep. I pooh-poohed the idea instantly, thinking about my failed experiments in sleeping to audiobooks—wherein I could occasionally fall asleep but would always wake up again, with the added frustration of having missed half the story. But then it slowly dawned on me, that if the problem was missing the plot, then all I had to do was pick subject matter that I wouldn't mind sleeping through.

It had to be something interesting enough to distract me from thinking about sleep while I remained awake, but unimportant enough that I could drift off to sleep with impunity when I was ready. I had a few false starts, but eventually discovered the perfect bedtime audio content: single-narrator history podcasts. They have simple stories that make them easy to follow without getting too bored or too mentally engaged, and the relative short duration of a podcast means I don't usually miss out on too much when I lose consciousness.

There was still the matter of waking up again, but that actually turned out to be a boon rather than a liability. I would suddenly snap to alertness at 1am, for example, with the conviction that I hadn't slept a wink, but then I could look back at the playlist and see how many episodes had played but I simply hadn't heard. I'd maybe been conscious for half an episode, and then the rest of the time, I was asleep. Sleep state misperception is real, and I was living it! The podcasts gave me a pretty clear metric of how much I was sleeping (a lot more than I had thought!) and with that, a much stronger confidence in my ability to sleep.

I had objective evidence that I was sleeping most of the time when I'd previously thought I was awake, and that felt good!

Another thing that felt good was giving myself permission to let go of my rigid sleep rules. Part of the insomnia recovery process involved setting a very strict wake-up time every day, and for months, I clung to that like a lifeline. But more recently, I've started letting myself sleep in after late nights out—and not just letting myself, but encouraging myself. On most days, no matter how late I've been up, I'll wake up between 7 and 8 AM. But then, I'll often go back to bed and stay asleep until crazy late. One day recently, I didn't wake up until noon! I was never able to do that when I had insomnia! I was never able to do that even before I had insomnia! So the fact that I'm able to do that now, far from making me feel like a lazy sack of waste as it once would have, makes me feel great!

It's because of lazy mornings like that (and of course, the podcasts) that I've recently been able to start telling myself things like "You're really good at sleeping"—and believing it!

I titled my last insomnia post, "Miles to go before I sleep (like I used to)" but the truth is, I'm probably never going to sleep like I used to. I'm probably always going to suffer from occasional spells of bad sleep and psych myself out with periodic sleep anxiety. I'm probably always going to sleep less than all my companions. I'm probably always going to have my nights disrupted by stupid little impediments like a particularly happy mood or a can of soda with lunch. But I'm also probably always going to be a high-energy person who can handle sleep deprivation better than most. 

While I have spent a lot of time learning all my many sleep weaknesses, it's only in this year of being a former insomniac that I think I've finally learned to have faith in my sleep strengths. I may not always be able to sleep well, but at least I can rest easy.

Wet Hot American Appliance

In 2018, it was the Water Products Purchase. In 2019, it was the Laundry Filtration Installation. In 2020 it was the Solar System Setup (and the clothesline!). It seems like every year, I make another biggish investment in some planet-friendly home improvement, but in 2021, there was not an environment blog post to be found! What happened? Did I give up? Had I succumbed to the allure of conspicuous consumption? Was I just too busy riding high on a lavish lifestyle of gas-guzzling flights around the world? (Hint: it was still COVID. I was most definitely not).

Of course I hadn't quit my commitment to a life of extreme green—I just got lazy about blogging! But here I am, only 8 months after the fact, finally getting around to telling you about my latest eco-endeavor—switching to a tankless water heater.

This story starts all the way back in 2016, when I first bought my house. My memories of this period are a little hazy because I've tried to block them out. It was a stressful 7 months of nonstop fixing of things that I hadn't known were broken! But among the most egregious of those things was the state of the water heater. Shortly after closing, I do recall having to bring in the gas company for some reason—maybe because my gas dryer wasn't running, or maybe to get the gas turned on in the first place. In any case, when the gas man left, he left in his wake two big red tags wired to my furnace and water heater, reading something along the lines of "HAZARD: DO NOT USE! TO BE REMOVED ONLY BY A CERTIFIED PLUMBER" and the gas lines leading to them firmly shut off. I, um, removed the tags.

Well, for at least a few days, I left the tags on and focused on regretting my life decisions. Then I had another technician come to the house for some other reason, and he blithely removed the tag on the furnace without a second's thought. He was not a certified plumber. So with that good precedent, I removed the tag from the water heater and lived with it in its life-threatening condition for the next 5 years. I am only telling you this now because no one died.

In case you're curious just what made this appliance so dangerous, it was this: The top of it was pitted with holes from years of rusting. The flue pipe, which at one point had been affixed to the top of the tank, now just balanced on three spindly and unattached legs, one of which had slipped into a rust hole and caused the whole pipe to teeter out of position.  I was informed that, when out of position, it could allow combustion fumes like carbon monoxide to escape out into my living areas. The solution, I decided, was to make sure it stayed in position. I placed it back in its precarious home and precariously positioned other objects around it to help it stay upright. I also kept my carbon monoxide detector supplied with fresh batteries at all times!

I hoped we could limp along like this until the heater crapped out entirely, at which point my home warranty should cover a replacement. But after 5 years of limping, waiting with one ear cocked for the wailing of a carbon monoxide alarm, I decided I was going to have to take matters into my own hands and replace the water heater with my own money.

Research-Time had arrived, and the more research I did, the more it became clear that tankless heaters are by far the most energy efficient of the water heating options out there. Among their other benefits, they take up less space than a traditional water heater, and they never run out of hot water. Since I wasn't really hurting for space in my basement and had never run out of hot water, those weren't compelling arguments to make the switch, but in my quest to protect the planet, it was really the only responsible choice.

Tankless heaters are much more expensive to install than storage heaters, but I felt confident that I would get a nice rebate in exchange, because the utility companies are always giving out rebates for Energy Star appliances. But alas! The electric company only gives out rebates for hybrid heat pump water heaters...which aren't compatible with my basement layout. The gas company gives out rebates for tankless water heaters, but only if you have them installed by one of their participating installers, all of which quoted me such high fees that I'd end up spending more even with the rebate.

Eventually I settled on paying a cheap company full price to install a gas-powered tankless water heater. When it was all said and done, I was underwhelmed.

Going into the project, I'd been prepared for be the biggest downside of going tankless: you have to run the water longer before it comes out of the tap hot. I didn't figure that would bother me—I can have a little patience, if it's for a good cause. But as I repeatedly stood idly next to the shower, watching the still-cold water swirl uselessly down the drain for what seemed like forever before I could even get in, I began to wonder: had I just traded lower energy usage for higher water usage?

Well, according to this handy graph from the water company, probably not. 

 

 

My new water heater was installed right about December 20, 2021. The water usage in the two billing periods after the installation was exactly equal to the usage in the same billing periods the year before the installation.

On the other hand, according to this graph from the gas company, the energy savings from this new water heater, if any, have been negligible. 

 

 

My gas usage is in fact lower than the previous year's, for almost every billing period...but that includes all the billing periods before I even had the new heater installed. So while I'm apparently not wasting a ton of water with the new heater, neither am I saving any money or gas.

So, of all the eco-friendly home improvements I've implemented over the past few years, the tankless water heater might have been the least impactful. if I was expecting some monumental improvements in my quality of life or my bills, I didn't get it. The much higher up-front costs of this high-tech heater may never be offset by energy savings. And because it operates on a computerized system, I fully expect it to fail just out of warranty and require expensive repairs. I probably could have done just as well or better with a new, more efficient, storage-style heater. But, uh, at least I gained some extra floor space behind the furnace?

Getting Clotheslined

I made passing mention of my newly purchased clothesline way back in 2020, promising a whole post about it that was very long in coming. But now it's here! You finally get to learn how a simple string brought joy into my life.

During the lockdowns of 2020, I spent a lot of time obsessing about dog fur. It was all over every surface of my home and every article of my clothes. When I took to the Internet in an effort to find something that would actually remove the fur and that wasn't a lint roller (single-use sticky plastic sheets? Not eco-friendly at all!), I came across someone's claim that hanging clothes out on a line was a surefire way to get the fur off them. Maybe it had something to do with all the flapping in the breeze, I assumed, but I didn't think about it too much.

That was just the final push I needed to get me to buy a clothesline, something I'd been considering for a while. I'd never been happy about using a hot air dryer—it's damaging to fabrics, uses a lot of gas and electricity, and generates indoor heat which is very undesirable at the height of summer. Hanging all my laundry to dry sounded pretty labor-intensive, but if it would reduce both my environmental footprint and the amount of dog hair on my clothes, it sounded like it would be labor well spent.

I ordered a retractable clothesline (made of plastic, ugh—but that was bound to hold up to the elements better than any natural materials) from Home Depot. It was 50 feet long, long enough to run from my shed to a corner of the house which conveniently already had nails sticking out of it, and once I'd figured out a way to attach the clothesline housing to the sheet-metal shed without ripping holes in the metal (I screwed through the shed wall into small wood blocks to help distribute the load), it was laundry time!

I quickly grew to love the clothesline. Although hanging the clothes took significantly longer than stuffing them into a dryer and pushing Start, I found something pleasantly quaint about the whole practice. And, as mindless chores go, it was oddly soothing to perform. At that time, I was working from home, so I could wash my clothes in the morning, and the minutes I spent doing laundry became welcome breaks from work. Plus, the colorful array of garments outside my window reminded me of a festive string of flags—like fun and functional backyard decor!

Of course, there are definite downsides to air-drying your laundry. If you start too late, it'll still be damp when the sun sets; and leaving it out overnight, while possible, tends to result in it getting dewy and slowing the drying process. Sometimes bugs crawl into the clothes or spiders build webs on them! So you really must start in the morning and have the better part of the day to leave the clothes outside. When you don't have the luxury of working from home, timing of the wash can be a challenge.

A 50-foot clothesline, no matter how tautly you pull it, will sag under the weight of its load, unfortunately low enough that even if the clothes don't quite touch the ground, they're still low enough that your dog can pee on them. Yes, it's happened.

I also find something disconcerting about airing my undies for all the neighbors to see, but I've found a way to work around that. I just I drape my more personal garments over the edge of the laundry basket and set them in a corner of the yard where they're hidden by a fence.

And then there's the matter of towels. Cotton terrycloth doesn't get very fluffy on a clothesline, but if you like drying yourself off with stiff sheets of sandpaper, it probably won't be a problem for you!

I wouldn't recommend using a clothesline as the only means of drying your laundry, because there are just some days when it's too wet or too cold for it to be practical. I still have the gas dryer for those days, but I use it a lot less now. The rest of the time, I happily put on my flapping fashion show. For me, the satisfaction of reduced energy use (and the joy of pretending I'm a pioneer woman!) outweighs the drawbacks.

Oh, and remember the reason I bought the clothesline in the first place? That part about line-drying being a panacea for dog-fur infestations? Well, I've left clothes on the line for days. I've left them out in high winds and torrential rains, and the fur in my sweaters remains undisturbed. All the forces of nature combined are no match for the tenacious grip of a single dog hair. So while hanging my clothes on a line has proved a welcome practice in many ways, in the specific area of dog-fur-management, I'll be hanged if I wasn't fed a line!

Valerie-Times Day XXXIX

This is the first time I've been single on Valentine's Day since 2013, so I didn't quite know what to do with myself.

Back then, I made a point of being bitter about my status every year, but I've grown up over the past 9 years and, either I've gained some maturity or I've lost the energy to wallow in self-pity. Who knows—maybe those are actually the same thing! In any case, I don't seem to have it in me to muster up much bitterness. In fact, I'm feeling a little upbeat about the whole thing!

This year, as soon as it became clear I would be without a lover on the day of love, I hatched a plan. At first, I intended to go to a Valentine's Day singles mixer (something I did the last year I was single as well), but as my weekend before it filled up with events, I realized what I needed more than anything was just a quiet evening in my own company. I logged out of the dating apps, turned down all two gentlemen who requested to see me that day, and planned a date with myself. To use an entirely hackneyed phrase, I was going to make it a day of self-love.

I would light all the scented candles in the house and take a shower with scented shower steamers. I would order a stuffed-crust pizza and eat cheesecake for dessert. I would cut my hair and epilate my face (because I've been putting those things off for too long; not because they are particularly indulgent treats). I would take a silly selfie with my dog. I would shop online for a gift for myself (a habit I started when I was single back in the previous decade, and continued even when I was partnered, because — let's face it — men are terrible at gifts). And I would do it all in the romantic ambience of my themed living room, which I had decked out in red-and-purple floral decor as soon as I put my Christmas decorations away for the year.

 

Though I was dead-set on having a true Valerie-Times Day—all by myself and blissfully free of men (who always seem to disappoint me on this most high-stakes holiday), somehow one managed to worm his way in. I'll spare you the agonizing details of what ensued, but it ended with him slinking out my front door like a wounded puppy, still clutching the bouquet that he'd thought to bestow upon me.

I could have handled that better.

It's true I had relished in the idea of a very anti-romantic Valentine's Day, but I hadn't planned on crushing anyone's heart quite so brutally. While I still got my much-anticipated evening of solitude, I spent most of it ruminating about what had gone down and how I could have avoided it, so it wasn't quite the celebration of singledom I'd hoped for.

The irony doesn't escape me. I'd spent most of my adult life feeling gypped on Valentine's Day—whether because of lack of a man or lack of effort from a man, but this was the first year ever where I wasn't going to let my happiness be influenced by men. And yet somehow, at the eleventh hour, my Valentine's Day was ruined by a man! 

 

At least I still got my cheesecake.

This Adventure in Cooking had a longer timeline than any before, and it was worth the wait. It's so delicious it needs no further introduction (or maybe that's because the painfully descriptive title says it all!), so I'm going to be like no food blogger ever and jump right to the recipe!

Mini cheesecake with lemon curd topping and a gingersnap crust

Prep time: 1.25 years

Cook time: zero minutes

Serves: 1

Ingredients

• 1 lemon tree + 1/2 Tbsp lemon zest
• Some gingersnaps you got from a Christmas cookie exchange
• 1 8-oz box cream cheese, room temperature
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• Sugar, Butter, Eggs, you know, all the usual suspects when it comes to making a delightful dessert

Instructions

The Lemon Curd

1. Start with a lemon tree. You'll probably want a dwarf Meyer lemon tree, because you want to be able to pluck those juicy ripe fruits right from the comfort of your living room in the middle of a January blizzard. You'll want to acquire this tree about a year and a half in advance, because you'll need time for it to flower, nearly die from overwatering, flower again, produce lemons, and ripen said lemons before you can move on to step two. Which is...
   
2. Harvest 2 lemons from your indoor lemon tree.
   
3. Use aforementioned lemons to make a mouth-watering lemon curd. Now, I know you can probably make lemon curd in your sleep, but if you have forgotten some of the steps, you can use this handy recipe. It is a little known fact that if you follow a recipe to the letter, the creativity gods will smite you, so make the following changes:
   1. Grate both of your lemon peels until they are limp as wet rags, but still be short by an entire half tablespoon of lemon zest (that's half the required amount)! Now you're faced with a dilemma: you can either harvest your last remaining lemon, grate its peel, and still be short 1/4 tablespoon, plus have a naked lemon to deal with; or you can top off the tablespoon with the dried lemon peel you always keep in the pantry. It really is no contest, but you should spend an inordinate amount of time deliberating before choosing the second option.
   2. Decide to use up the old pats of butter you pilfered from restaurants over the past month, rather than carefully measuring out your butter like some kind of square. Three single-serve pats and a big old slice from Cheesecake Factory oughta do it!
   3.  At least one more change of your own, to appease the creativity gods.

The Cheesecake

No-bake cheesecake is one of my favorite treats to have at the ready when I get a sugar craving. It's so easy to make, and there is no limit to the things you can top it with. I make this stuff on the regular, so believe me when I say I have pro tips!

1. Open the can of condensed milk and pour about 1/3 of it into the bowl of an electric mixer. This step is important to do first, because it will prevent the cream cheese from sticking to the bowl and failing to blend.
   
2. I hope you did allow your cream cheese to warm up to room temperature, because this will also enable it to mix more effectively. Another pro tip is to use real cream cheese, not the low-fat or neufchâtel variety. While those are very tasty and indistinguishable from full-fat cream cheese in most applications, in this recipe, they will remain gritty and produce a thinner mixture. Add the cream cheese, in small chunks, mixing with the electric mixer the entire time. I like to use the "cake mixes" or "cream" settings for this, which are medium speeds on my mixer.
   
3. Once all the cream cheese has been incorporated, drizzle more condensed milk into the mixture until it has reached your desired level of sweetness. It is possible to make this recipe using an entire can of condensed milk, but you get a thicker filling and less of a hit to your blood glucose if you hold back some of the milk.
   

The crust

No judgment if you like to eat your no-bake cheesecake straight out of the mixer bowl (it's that good!) but if you want your creation to resemble a proper dessert and have an additional layer of texture and flavor, then you should give it a crust.

1. Start with a slightly disappointing neighborhood Christmas cookie exchange. Now, you're no master chef, but even you know the difference between a burnt cookie and one that's fit to give as a gift. When you bust your butt making buckeye bars (one of your favorite desserts!) and give them all away, you hope to get something of comparable value in return. Not—just as a hypothetical example and not a real-life one, naturally!—3 different varieties of overcooked cookies and a baggie of "Soft Chips Ahoy." To be fair, there were some real winners in this cookie exchange of yours, but among them, the gingersnaps were not. They were a little bit tough, if you're being perfectly honest. While tough cookies are not a joy to bite into, they do make a decent pie crust.
   
2. So deposit one on your cutting board or crushing surface of your choosing, and
3. Have at it with a rolling pin! One cookie makes a nice crust for a single-serving  cheesecake, but you can feel free to crush all of them at once and make a full-size pie.
   

The assembly process

1. Spread a layer of crushed gingersnap into a bowl or pie plate.
   
2. Spread several healthy dollops of cheesecake filling over that.
   
3. Top it all with another healthy dollop of lemon curd!

This Insta-worthy dessert (Sorry, I still have not earned my food photography badge, but it really can be pretty if done right!) tastes even better than it looks! The best news is you'll have tons of lemon curd left over, so you can really knock the creativity gods' socks off when you come up with other things to do with it (and share them with me, please)!

This is one Adventure in Cooking that cannot be categorized, in even a small way, as a misadventure!