Cherry Delight
You’ve probably already eaten my study species.
Well, maybe not my specific study species (Xiphinema spp.) as its presence kills plants and puts fields under quarantine, but everyone’s ingested a bit of phylum Nematoda without realizing it.
Nathan Cobb, the Father of Nematology said in 1915 “If all the matter in the universe except nematodes were swept away, our world would still be recognizable, and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes, and oceans represented by a film of nematodes.”
We live in sanitary modern times, but consider the following: cooking food kills unwanted microorganisms. What happens to the corpses? They’re still there. It can be a problem when medical devices still have dead bacterial proteins attached that could trigger an immune response, but for food, you’re fine. If you eat fish, your meal has almost certainly had worms it in at some point, but given their hosts are fish and not humans they pose little threat to us (though you should still cook your fish or make sure it’s from a seller that flash freezes for an appropriate amount of time).
If anything, we should actually be less squeamish about creepy crawlies in our bodies. Helminth therapy (helminth coming from Greek for parasitic worm) has been suggested as a way to alleviate autoimmune diseases. The idea is that many autoimmune responses are the body’s overbuilt system looking to attack a co-evolving symbiont, but without a target the body turns on itself. The complex interactions between us and our symbionts enrich our biology, and we are never alone.
Anyway, here’s a recipe for Cherry Cream Cheese Pie (Cherry Delight) but feel free to substitute fruit of your choice in lieu of cherries, especially if you’re a cosmopolitan, non-specific nematode like Xiphinema!
This was my ngin-ngin (paternal grandma’s) recipe and my dad’s favorite so we make it every year for his birthday.
Recipe
½ pt whipping cream
1 t. vanilla (Mom substitutes the whipping cream and vanilla with a small frozen Cool Whip)
1 8-oz cream cheese
½ c. sugar
1 can cherry pie filling
1 baked 9” pie crust
Directions
- Beat whipping cream until stiff, fold in vanilla. Set aside. *(Mom substitutes frozen cool whip because ain’t nobody got time for whipping cream and folding)
- In another bowl, mix cream cheese and sugar until smooth and creamy.
- Fold cheese mixture into whipped cream [or cool whip]
- Pour mixture into baked pie shell.
- Refrigerate until set.
- Top with cherry pie filling. You can put the cherry pie filling in a separate container and then scoop out however many cherries and syrup you want per slice. Alternatively, dump the cherries all over the top if you don’t want to fuss with a separate container.
Danielle Tom, M.S.