Bake in Case of Emergency

Bake in Case of Emergency

You know that scene from A Christmas Story where the father descends into the basement to battle the furnace and a cloud of gray smoke mingled with garbled obscenities seeps through the floor vent? Things have been a little like that at our house lately, but with the plumbing. We’ve plunged, snaked, and even resorted to calling in an “expert” (who showed up with the exact same equipment we had and scratched his head about what to do). Every time we thought we’d fixed the problem things would go smoothly for a week or so, but then everything would back up again. Noel was halfway to having enough hours to be a certified plumber by the time things went really wrong. (He really has no intentions of ever being a plumber, but if he did he says his company would be called The Poopsmith.)

We had last minute guests over that had been stranded at the Denver airport and were so excited to have a place to rest their heads, wash laundry, and take a hot shower before heading on their way. Unfortunately, we were only able to provide two out of three of those services. Katherine called me into the laundry room after her last load saying there seemed to be something leaking. As I ran downstairs I prayed, “Please let it be the washing machine, please let it be the washing machine,” but was dishearteningly met with sewage pouring out of the pipes’ joints and all over the the unfinished (phew) part of the basement. Fortunately, most everyone had already used the bathroom and I was the only one who had to make a trip over to the park. We sent Katherine and Sam off in clean clothes, but without showers, and wished them better luck than we were having. We called a different plumber and spent a good chunk of cash running a 115 foot bladed auger from our house to the main sewage line.  (I should note that we did save $300+ by having Noel assist the plumber so it could have been worse if Noel wasn’t so handy.) Noel finally went off to work and stayed late while I kept the kids at bay and played HazMat team of one.  It had literally been a pretty crappy day and I really wanted to just take a nap, but there was one thing that kept me motivated to finish all the things I needed to do: a slice of White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cheesecake drizzled with caramel as my reward.

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cheesecake ~ The Tall and the Short of It

Tuesday (the day before the plumbing apocalypse) was National Cheesecake Day and we of course couldn’t let such a day go uncelebrated. I decided to tackle making my Cheesecake Factory Favorite and we invited a few friends over to join us in the gluttony. All of the copycat recipes didn’t seem quite right to me, so I combined a few recipes and crossed my fingers that it would pull through. Other than a bundt pan denting the top of the cake (I still don’t know which monkey is to blame), it was pretty near perfection. I recommend that everyone make one and after eating some generous slices, freeze the rest to be used in case of emergency.

Check out our food blog for the recipe and more enticing photos.

4 thoughts on “Bake in Case of Emergency

  1. I had sewage backing up (from my house AND my neighbor’s house…double yuck) in my basement and lawn this week too! What a coincidence! One of the few times I was thankful to not be a homeowner was seeing the mess and just turning the light off in the basement and closing the door and calling someone else. Hopefully you got it all fixed and figured out. Also, the cheesecake looks amazing. I’m going to have to try out your recipe.

  2. That sounds horrible. Plumbing problems are the times when naughty words slip out of Blake’s mouth, and we haven’t even had anything of that magnitude… 😉 I could only imagine how awful that would be. I hope it is all the way resolved now!

    The cheesecake looks amazing. I’m convinced that you could have separate blogs for cooking, sewing, being green, landscaping, design, and mommy stuff. So I’m glad that I get to have them all rolled into one 🙂

  3. Oh, Audrey! I feel your plumbing pain. I really, really hope your last set of auger-ing works long term. The lead up to that sounds just like what caused us to have to replace the entire main house line all the way out into the street and the city main line. I do NOT wish that upon you and Noel.

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