$18 Slice

• Posted on March 21, 2016
• by Jamie Stahl
• in Dessert
• 2 Comments.

If you read/watched my previous post from March 15, you already know that something tremendous has just changed in my life.  If you haven’t, 1.) why not? 2.) just kidding, but seriously can you go read it? 3.) actually, can you finish reading this one first and then go back to the previous one because I don’t want you to get interrupted and then get sidetracked and end up not reading anything because the oven timer beeped or something because I can get distracted so easily even if I’m just clicking from one page on a website to another or even if I’m supposed to be writing a blog post and then I just decide to write an extremely grammatically incorrect run on sentence that isn’t related to the topic and what was I even talking about?

As I’ve discussed before, I have quite a lengthy list of food allergies, or so I thought, which is a significant contributing factor to my being a picky eater.  For approximately 25 years, I spent my life avoiding a number of different foods due to allergies, specifically anything that was nut related.  These allergies had been tested numerous times by doctors throughout my life and with certain foods, the indicated level of allergy had always fluctuated.  So, imagine my surprise when I found out less than two weeks ago that I was no longer allergic to tree nuts.

On Tuesday, February 23rd, 2016 I was out on my usual food adventures.  I decided to go to Serendipity 3 for no reason other than it being a long time since I’d been there.  After staring at the ten-story high menu, I finally decided to go for a slice of cheesecake, specifically The Ultimate Creme.  Apparently I thought it was appropriate to eat cheesecake with fudge and strawberries at 2pm after having had a “normal lunch” already.  I also thought it was appropriate to spend $18 on this slice of cheesecake, because that’s normal.

I happened to have been texting with my mom while I was at “post-lunch” waiting for my “lifestyles of the rich and famous” cheesecake.  I took the first bite of the cheesecake and remember just thinking to myself, “oh my god” while feeling my eyes open big.  I immediately texted my mom these exact words: “Best Fucking Cheesecake.”

I’m sitting there like a big gluttonous pig stuffing my face with cheesecake, when all of a sudden I start to feel a strange texture in my mouth.  Okay, strange isn’t really a good word to use because it wasn’t like I felt cotton or glass shards.  That would be strange.  It was more like an unfamiliar cheesecake consistency.  Generally when I’ve eaten cheesecake, the crust is very sandy and gritty, but this time it was a lot crunchier and bigger.  I took a couple of single pieces out of my mouth and did a little inspection.  It sort of looked like a piece of oatmeal that was fat and hard.  Immediately I assumed it was some kind of nut and started to mentally plan out my route to the nearest hospital.

As much as I was afraid of going into anaphylactic shock, I also really liked “the world’s most expensive slice of cheesecake” and thought that I didn’t actually know what the hard thing was so maybe I’d be fine.  It was almost like a little angel/devil on my shoulder action about what to do with the cheesecake.  Admittedly, I made the careless decision of continuing to eat the top half of the cheesecake that my brain decided was safe to eat.  I mean, what did I have to lose?  Just my life.  Clearly the cheesecake was so good that it was literally, “to die for.”  I decided I didn’t want to know what it was that I had eaten and after about 25 minutes of sitting at the table, I still felt perfectly fine.  According to “Doctor Jamie” that meant that I’d be okay and continue going about my day, business as usual.

Hours later, sometime around 9pm, I was watching something on TV that reminded me of my earlier brush with death.  I started to research this exact cheesecake online to figure out what the crust was made with.  It was pretty hard to come up with any information, but I was finally able to identify a couple of articles that indicated walnuts used in the crust.

Fast forward two days later, I had made an appointment to see my allergist and discuss being re-tested for a number of different foods.  He conducted a skin test for 60 different food allergens on both of my forearms.  After the appropriate 20 minute wait time, the results indicated a positive allergy to peanuts (which I knew) and was completely negative for all tree nuts tested.  Based on these results, the allergist wanted to me come back to do a “food challenge” with a few different types of nuts in order to confirm the negative showing.

On March 9, 2016 I returned to the allergist’s office with a shopping bag containing a variety of tree nuts.  I was at the office from 9am to 2pm eating carefully portioned walnuts, hazelnuts, and almonds every 20 minutes.  At the end of this grueling process, it had become proven fact that I was no longer allergic to tree nuts!  The doctor recommended that I eat nut products daily in order to build it up in my system and with that, I was free to go.

Since this whole tree nut eating came to fruition, I’ve tried a number of new foods.  Basically, I’ve had different forms of chocolate with nuts and baked goods with nuts.  I’m still not comfortable with the whole concept of swallowing something that I thought my entire life was poisonous to me, but I’m working on it with Macarons, Nutella, and Ferrero Rocher.  Oh and I plan on getting that cheesecake again and eating the whole $18 slice!

by

by