The Secret Ingredient in Martin’s Cheesecake

How many times have you bought the wrong item in the supermarket because you couldn’t read the packaging? And how many times have you actually gone ahead and used that ingredient in your cooking, thinking it was something else?

There are so many ways that this situation could go terribly wrong, but sometimes you might accidentally end up with a surprising new culinary creation.

Here is the story of Martin, who has retinitis pigmentosa in both eyes, about his own special cheesecake recipe:

“My wife was making a large cheesecake for which she needed about a quarter cup of sour cream, so we went out together to shop for ingredients. We have two supermarkets next to each other so when we went food shopping she went into one of the supermarkets to look for the sour cream, but they didn’t have any. So I went next door to the other supermarket and found the sour cream, and I got three little containers.

We got home and my wife made the batter for the cheesecake and the sour cream was the last ingredient that she added in. After pouring out the sour cream my wife sniffed the container and said “oh, that’s funny, I can smell garlic.” Well I couldn’t read the container and my wife hadn’t bothered to look, but it turned out that I had actually bought garlic and chives!

It was too late to do anything about the cake at this point so my wife poured the rest of the sour cream into the batter and baked it.

We had some guests over, including my wife’s mother, who used to be quite a good cake baker, and even sold her cakes. She would normally only take one slice of cake, but this time she had about three or four. She said this cheesecake was fantastic and didn’t us believe when we told her afterward what was really in the cake, but it was true.”

These days Martin has his OrCam with him when he goes shopping, so reading the food labels is no longer a problem, but now when he goes shopping for cheesecake ingredients, garlic and chive are always on the list.

Martin Israel is an OrCam user who has Retinitis Pigmentosa in both of his eyes. Martin’s low vision doesn’t get in his way of enjoying his hobbies, which include woodworking, traveling and helping his wife shop for groceries.