Hungry Caterpillar's Party Cheesecake

Well, I promised y'all this recipe, so here it is... please have a cheesecake, if you're here for the party.

Now, I make the recipe slightly differently, as far as presentation and serving sizes go. Go to your local party store (Ours is actually called The Party Store, but there was one in our old city called Paper Factory) and buy disposable wine glasses. These 'plastics' hold about 4 oz, and then when you have a party, you'll have 1) more parfait to spread around and 2) less worry about someone breaking a super tall glass. Recipe makes six regular sized parfaits (as pictured) or 12 small ones.

Ingredients

1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs
2 TBSP Splenda granular
1 1/2 TBSP butter or margarine, melted
4 oz tub-style light cream cheese
4 oz non fat cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup fat free sour cream
1/4 Splenda granular
1 cup light whipped topping
2 TBSP sugar free raspberry topping (or chocolate) (Walden's farm makes a great selection of 0 calorie ice cream toppers) (optional)
1 1/4 cup fresh fruits (strawberries, melon, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, watermelon, cantaloupe, etc.)

For a decorate approach, cut slices of melons and use small cookie cutters to punch out shapes. You can also garnish with various decorations (spiral cut orange peel, springs of mint, cocktail umbrellas, small plastic 'glass charms' and the like. have fun with it!)

In small bowl, mix graham cracker crumbes, 2 TBSP splenda, and butter. Set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, beat cream cheeses with a mixer until creamy. Add sour cream, 1/4 cup splenda and stir until smooth. Fold in light whipped topping.

Divide graham cracker mixture among your glasses, covering the bottom of each glass. (for hollow stem plastic wine glasses, you may want to make up more graham cracker mixture. This will fall into the bottom of the stem and your guests will not be able to get it out, so it won't change the calorie count, unless they are very very determined, and really, if they are, they probably shouldn't be on WW anyway) Press down firmly. Divide the cream cheese mixture in half, then use divide that half into the number of glasses you intend to serve (six large, or a dozen small; this is about 3 tablespoons of mix for a large glass, and 1 heaping tablespoon to small ones)

Add plain berries to each cup, enough to fill a 'layer'... blueberries, raspberries, etc. Add a like amount of the cream cheeses on top of this berry layer. Top with 0 calorie raspberry or chocolate and decorative cut fruits and melons. Garnish as desired. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving. (Do not put fat free whipped topping on, unless you're going to do so immediately before serving. That stuff melts unattractively VERY quickly.)

Nutritional Information:
For Six servings:
185 calories/8 grams fat/Fiber 1 gram (4 WW points)
For Twelve Servings
93 calories/4 grams fat/Fiber .5 (2 WW points)

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I'm in a strange mental place today, and not just because there's all these party people wandering around on my blog (Hi, Y'all!).

Do you ever do your visualization and then realize you've completely messed it up? Or something happens that makes it all a moot point?

As most of you know, I haven't been telling my best friend that I'm on Weight Watchers. Honestly, I didn't expect it to go on that long (either the lifestyle changes, or the not telling her, don't ask me which one, because the answer wouldn't be flattering to either of us!) And then her oldest child ended up with Type 1 Diabetes, and we just haven't seen each other at all this year.

The last time I saw her, or her husband, was when we were visiting their daughter in the hospital. Before that was about a week prior, when Anne was first starting to develop the symptoms, only no one knew what was wrong with her, and Carol was not paying the slightest attention to anything else that was going on, only that she had a hungry infant and a sick pre-schooler.

While I doubt that any amount of time will ease their anxiety about Anne, they are in a better mental place about it. I had thought we would be seeing them next week for the first time since January... and as every knows, I have lost a good amount of weight, as well as taking myself down a few pants sizes. So... my quandary has been this: what now? Bad: What do I say if she asks me about my weight loss?

Worse: How do I feel if she doesn't notice?

And I'd thought I had a whole extra week to prepare for this, since we're co-hosting the Early Bird cookout next weekend. I hadn't gotten an invitation to Pearl's birthday party (Pearl's mother tends to forget we exist because she doesn't see us often) and thought we weren't going to be going. But we got the invite in the mail two days ago, and since I was so mad about not being invited, it would be really shoddy of me not to go.

So now I have to face everyone for the first time in quite a while. I haven't seen Pearl's mom in... oh, since Darcy's birthday party, back in October, and even then I didn't get to talk to her much, trying to keep a half dozen pre-schoolers from running amok in the Build-a-Bear shop...

And I am sooooo not ready for this.