This is a recipe I invented on Thanksgiving. You will first need some ingredients.

Crust:
graham crackers
cinnamon
sugar
butter or margarine
vanilla
walnuts

Filling:
16 oz. cream cheese (two standard packages)
3/4 cup of sugar
2 eggs
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 pint (16 oz.) sour cream
1 tsp vanilla (although I tripled this, as I always do with vanilla)
walnuts

Optional:
walnuts
chocolate (to shave)

To make the filling, simply mix all the ingredients. I first softened the cream cheese in a bowl, then added the sugar and mixed well. Next came the eggs, lemon juice, sour cream, and vanilla, in that order and mixing after each addition.

I put the walnuts in a plastic bag and used a rolling pin to crush them. Do this once for the filling, crushing the walnuts as finely or coarsely as you wish, and then crush some more for the crust.

For the crust, mix together the crushed walnuts and crushed graham crackers. Add a dash of cinnamon - nothing exact, but remember that it’s strong - and no more than a tablespoon of sugar. Mix all of these ingredients well.

After mixing those ingredients for the crust, melt some butter in a cup. Add a decent amount of vanilla to it and mix it very well. Add this slowly to the dry crust mixture, stirring after each addition, until it is just barely capable of sticking together without crumbling. If you make the mixture too damp, the crust will be hard, and if you don’t add enough, it will be dry and crumbly and fall apart. There’s leeway though so don’t worry too much.

Get a shallow pie pan or something of the sort to cook the cheesecake in. Take your crust mixture and sprinkle it over the pan, then press it down to flatten a crust together. I used my hands to do this. After the bottom of the pan has its crust, the sides can be made in the same fashion - sprinkle some crust mixture, and squish it up against the sides. It takes a bit of practice before you can do this without it crumbling down on you.

Now pour in the cheesecake mix, and sprinkle the rest of your walnut crumbles on top.

Put this in the oven at 350˚F and cook it for about 40 minutes to an hour. Taking it out prematurely won’t kill it, although it may seem more like pudding than cheesecake if it’s not cooked thoroughly.

After it has cooled a bit, sprinkle some chocolate shavings on the top. I did this with a large block of milk chocolate and a knife.

After that it’s done! Let it chill for a few hours or overnight, and enjoy the easiest, creamiest cheesecake you’ve ever made!

It’s Thanksgiving now,¹ and denying any pretense of originality, a list of thankful things is in order.

Looking back on the past year, from the very last Thanksgiving to now, well…

I suppose I should say first that I’m thankful to be alive, since there are so very many who aren’t.² I’m glad because I’m glad, because I can be and because I want to be and because it surprisingly makes as much sense as it doesn’t, and something about local variables and definitions.

I’m thankful for my mother because I love her and I have her and she gave birth to me instead of other unhealthy alternatives. I love that she loves me even though she never says it and even though she makes no sense and even though she makes few pies outside Thanksgiving and so very because the pies are so very good.

I’m thankful that I have things to eat and money to make for a car to drive and exactly two covers and one pillow. I’m grateful to the computer I’m typing on even though it cost me money and even though I don’t really have money and even though this means that I have contractually enslaved some future sequence of myself. I’m happy that crackers always win, because I trust them more than legislation, that marijuana is easy to grow, because it keeps cops from spending their time more sinisterly,³ and that money is in bills only most of the time.

I’m thankful for my friends because I have them and because they have me and because they for some reason are thankful for me because they have me and because I have them and because for some reason I’m thankful for them because I have them and because they have me and because we all have recursion and it’s great. I’m grateful to their numbers which are large and which take at least an entire hand to count and to the fact that I can trust them because they are my family and not my friends and because they are my friends and not my family.

I’m thankful for my inheritance⁴ because it is mine and because no one else can take it no matter whether they have it themselves, and because I can elect it or deny it because it’s mine to choose, and because one part does not lessen another and percentages only work with pieces and because I am not broken but whole. Except for the sleep thing. Still working on that.

I’m thankful that I’m thankful because I can be thankful because I can thank because I can be. I’m glad that I can be arbitrary because it is arbitrary and because it is ineluctable and because those aren’t really antonyms until they’re nyms.

I’m thankful because I love because I can love because I thought I loved although I didn’t love and because I was wrong but because I was right, and that it was imagined but that it was real, and that all of this makes so very little sense that it can only be most sensible.

And most of all I’m thankful that no one is reading this and those who are reading this have no idea that they aren’t, although they see that they can’t!

I hope everyone else is having as thankful a Thanksgiving!

1. Ok, tomorrow. To be fair, Thanksgiving is a week-long holiday under our tables of definitions and food. [↩]
2. Like Robert Jordan :( [↩]
3. I swear it’s a word! [↩]
4. Herencia. Si no entiendes, fíjate en esto. [↩]