Ever read the Herriott books?
You know, James Herriott, the veterinarian who practiced in the Yorkshire Dales?
I read his books back in the day and they inspired a love for animals that has never ended.
Amazing to me…that gentle soul practiced veterinary medicine in the most brutal conditions you can imagine. He attended farm animals in northern England.
In the old days. Before antibiotics….
I’m looking at pictures of the Dales in winter and it is beautiful, harsh landscape.
Cold as hell.
Snow.
Few trees so the arctic winds howl across the countryside, blasting the hills and the stone barns and cottages.
Herriott tooled around in a tiny ancient car with rusted floorboards and flapping doors. Where your feet were supposed to rest you could see the ground hurtling past.
And oh yeah, the holes in the floorboards allowed snow to blow up though in the winter, and mud and water to geyser up the rest of the year.
He always had a shovel in the trunk (I mean the boot). And two or three of his dogs hanging all over him while he drove.
SO PICTURE HIS DAY…
At two in the morning the phone rings two floors down and it’s his turn so Herriott must drag himself from his warm bed to stumble down the cold dark stairs in the cold cold house and answer it.
A farmer has a cow that’s been in hard labor for six hours and nothing’s happening.
Bear in mind that Herriott just got back from a call around midnight and he’s had an hour and a half of sleep. Now he’s going to drive his ventilated car through blowing snow drifts and perform veterinary surgery.
Maybe in his pajamas…
He delivers the calf but gets stuck on the way out and it takes him an hour to get the car moving through the snow again.
When he gets back to the practice he thinks briefly about the bed upstairs with the piles of comfortable blankets but that’s not a possibility.
It’s time for morning farm rounds.
In the afternoon guess what?
The small animal surgery is open for business. He’s going to palpate dogs and cats while their anxious owners stand by.
Maybe cut a red rubber ball out of a German Shepherd.
At dinner he leaves his plate unfinished because the phone rings and he must rush to another emergency. This takes until nine o’clock.
On the way back from the farm he stops at the local for a quick pint and then home to bed.
But there are farmers in the pub and they ask him about the latest treatments for felon and Bang’s disease and why does he charge so much? and a quick pint turns into midnight.
Ahhhh, the warm covers. Blessed sleep.
Around 1:30AM the phone rings….
And he did this day after day year after year and kept a journal while he was at it, a journal that would make him the most famous veterinarian in history.
That’s dedication.
That’s loving what you do for a living.
That’s a calling.
ENTER THE WOO
Into this grim schedule step Mrs. Pumphrey and Tricki Woo.
Mrs. Pumphrey is the widow of….I think….a beer baron and Tricki is her totally pampered, overweight Pekingese.
They live in a sprawling brick manor with maids and a driver, and a solemn British limousine parked out front.
Herriott is called out to an emergency but he realizes the dog is just eating, among other things, too much goose liver pate. He very gently scolds Mrs. Pumphrey, telling her the dog needs exercise and a proper diet.
After the vet stuff is over she invites Herriott to sit by the fire and have a brandy, and he has some slack in his schedule so he puts his feet up.
She tells Adventures of Tricki Woo.
It’s cold outside and it’s warm with feet toward the flames, and Herriott drifts off into a world totally insulated, wonderfully comfortable.
PUSH COMES TO SHOVE
The turning point comes several weeks later. Another emergency call, this time Tricki is bloated and listless, barely responsive.
Over Mrs. Pumphrey’s protests Herriott packs up the dog. He takes Tricki back to the surgery.
No treatment, he just puts the Peke in with the five wild beasts he’s got running around the practice.
They briefly nose Tricki over and then include him in the fun.
The activities include squabbling over the food bowls, running frantically barking to the front door every time the doorbell rings, and chasing rats in the garage behind the practice.
After two weeks of this rough and tumble stuff Tricki Woo is fit, alert, and happy.
He’s cured!
Mrs. Pumphrey is overwhelmed by this success, and a few days later a wooden shipping crate, addressed to Uncle Herriott, is delivered to the practice:
Cognac
Pate
Chocolate candies
Sweetmeats (now what are those?)
Herriott and the other vets in the practice realize the significance of these gifts as they break out the snifters after lunch.
Surely this is a tiny piece of Nirvana.
Surely there must be some way to keep this gravy train going…
MAX, WHEN ARE YOU GONNA GET TO THE POINT?
Which brings us to to cheesecake….took awhile, didn’t it?
If you like baking cheesecakes for the precision of it…or if you like baking cheesecake for the taste or for the happiness it brings to other folks…
There’s going to be a lot of cheesecakes hanging around.
Some may be undercooked. Some may be overcooked. Some may have the Grand Canyon yawning at you.
Throw those out.
It’s tough to see $20 worth of excellent ingredients hit the DisposAll but you gotta do it.
Do you know Jiro?
He’s this 90 year old artisan who makes the most expensive sushi in Tokyo….and Tokyo is expensive to begin with.
His work is sublime.
He says, and this is a rough translation:
“If it isn’t right, if it doesn’t taste good, you can’t serve it”
Jiro
And he’s correct.
Once you throw out the bad ones, take stock. You still have a lotta cheesecakes hanging around. More than you can eat. You can gift them to friends, you can gift them to family.
But you’re going to run out of friends and family. Maybe your family doesn’t live nearby.
Maybe your friends are tired of secretly ditching the stuff they can’t finish….maybe they can’t eat dairy….
So…………..
Take a cheesecake to the vet.
What? ….that’s just….awkward!
Bear with me for a minute.
Let’s talk about your best friend in the world.
Who runs to the door and jumps all over you when you get home from work? Who rides in the passenger seat with his nose out the window? Who cuddles up with you in front of the TV? Who goes into guard mode when strangers approach the baby?
OK…maybe you got a badger.
But you catch my drift.
And who takes care of your best friend? Who gives the shots and the medical advice and gives you the news on the bloodwork and maybe cuts that red rubber ball out of your best friend’s stomach some scary Saturday morning?
Your vet, that’s who.
Veterinary work is brutal, whether it’s small animal or traveling around to farms.
Especially for the single practitioner.
Look at their hours of operation…people can’t take off work so they need to bring the cat in after 5pm, so the vet stays open. Some folks can’t get there at all during the week so the vet opens on Saturdays.
My vet is on deck at 7:30 in the morning, does surgery cases in the early afternoon, then sees medical cases again til 6 o’clock at night.
All the while delivering some good news and often some very very bad news to people who are so upset they can barely keep their act together.
Try that on for size.
Brutal.
Now some people like the vet and some people don’t like the vet….I’m not sure which camp you call home…
But here’s what I do know: when you walk through the front door unannounced with a homemade cheesecake you’ll see the faces light up.
You’ll be a friend to all.
You’ve provided a welcome break in a stressful day and you can see the surprise and the appreciation.
You didn’t show up with somebody else’s fruit basket or a bag of Hershey’s Kisses…you’re bringing something that you made with your own hands and is excellent.
And let’s face it…doing unexpected kindnesses for people is a good thing.
You will be remembered.
Fondly.
And while we’re at it, who takes care of your teeth?
EQUIPMENT LIST
- big Amazon box
- Cheesecake
- 10” cardboard round
- travel case
- plastic cake server
- plastic dinner forks
- paper plates
- toppings
- berries
- confectioner’s sugar (if you’re really OCD)
Box…. something large enough to comfortably fit all the stuff. You may want to raise all the flaps and shipping tape them in the open position.
Cheesecake….use an offset metal spatula or a plastic kitchen scraper or a big wide new putty knife to gently move the cheesecake to a 10” cardboard round. Make sure the parchment paper on the bottom of the cheesecake stays with the bottom of the baking pan.
Travel case….now you’ve got a 9” cheesecake in the center of a 10” round. You can click this into a 10” springform pan and the cheesecake will ride with a nice half inch buffer.
Use one of those 10” springform pans you’ve stopped using because the Fat Daddio’s pan works so much better.
You can get the pan back later. Or…
Travel case….if you’ve got a friendly grocery bakery department they can give you or sell you one of those clear plastic two-piece cake protectors. Last time I think I paid $1.65. If you think the cheesecake is going to move on you, use a piece of that rubberized shelf liner to stop any sliding around.
Plastic cake server….you can buy these bulk on Amazon or maybe the bakery department will spot you one.
Plastic dinner forks….get the clear plastic, heavy duty ones. You know those cheapo white plastic forks where the tines bend together while you’re trying to eat potato salad?
Don’t get those.
Plus a plastic spoon or two for the sauces.
Paper plates….Again, get good quality, like Chinet or a good plastic/foam plate. Those flimsy scallop-edge paper plates will absorb the topping and crumple under the strain
Topping….cheesecake shines with topping. If you’re doing commercial raspberry syrup or a jar of bonne maman cherry preserves bring a new one unopened. You’ll look like a player. If you’ve made a topping put it in a well-washed jam jar with a clean tight-fitting lid.
Berries….a lot of our toppings will involve fresh raspberries or blueberries so be a big shot and do an unopened pack. Make sure they’re looking good and fresh.
Confectioner’s sugar….put some in a new salt shaker, you can get it back when you pick up the springform pan.
SO HOW DOES IT WORK IN REAL LIFE?
The first time I walked into the waiting room cradling the big Amazon box everything behind the counter got real quiet, real fast. I looked from face to face, from the front desk to the farther-away desk to the tech who was only back there to file a folder.
They were all craning their necks.
Big eyes.
A kind of….wary…expression.
One of them even went up on tiptoe.
I was puzzled, but suddenly I understood:
They were trying to figure out, (without having to ask), what’s in the box?
I hadn’t thought about it beforehand, but…when somebody walks into the veterinary office
- carrying a large cardboard box
- with no top
- and nothing moving inside…
…it is often really bad news.
Hardly ever a cheesecake.
I blurted, It’s cheesecake!
Then everyone was joyous!
But I can tell you….it took them a really long second to unfreeze.
LINKS:
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriott
What To Drink with What You Eat
Fat Daddio’s 2 piece cheesecake pans
