Apple tree and Saturday

My brother John and his wife Gill wanted to get me a fruit tree for my birthday, so on Saturday Douglas and I went out to a nursery recommended by my parents, to choose an apple tree.

When Douglas was little, his dad had a James Greive apple tree, and since its good for both eating and cooking it seemed like a good choice. The nursery grows all its own trees, and its quite high up on the very edge of town, so we know it will be a good strong tree, and cope with life in our garden!

We also got some wallflowers and three good pots of Irises.. a yellow flag… a purple flag.. and one which will be purple with white bits in! (or the other way round). I love Irises and hope to add a few more to my collection in due course.

After plant shopping, we went food shopping. Douglas felt a bit wobbly so we had a cuppa first. We decided to make lemon cheesecake for visitors tomorrow, and I phoned my mum for some recipie ideas. Mum said use a packet mix. Humph didnt want to do that..wanted to make a real one.

Just before starting the shop, Douglas and I both looked at each other at the same time.. I said "I have a cunning plan! (Brits might already know this reference, but see link if you don't) " strange.. Douglas had had exactly the same cunning plan as me. As one person, we walked towards the book section of the supermarket, and leafed through some of their books until we found a rather nice recipie for a lemon cheescake!!

I got home and made a rather nice leek and potato soup, then a bit later made the cheesecake!

I thought I would give you the outlines of the recipie.. but be warned.. its not for Skinnifers!

Lemon Cheescake

(Best made the day before you need it)

1 tub Marsapone cheese
2 tubs Ricotta cheese
4 lemons (grate their rinds very finely)
Icing sugar
Butter
Digestive Biscuits

Break about one small packet of digestive biscuits up into little bits. (If you are lucky enough to have a super dooper mixer, throw them all in, and it will do this for you)
Put in the juice and rind of one lemon
Melt the butter and pour it into the bowl and let your mixer (or your wooden spoon, with arm attached) bash them all up and mix it in.

If you have a flan dish with a loose base it would be ideal, but I used a normal dish and lined it with cling film first.

Tip the mixture into your flan dish, and with the back of a large spoon, squash it firmly into the base and sides of the dish. Put it in a cold fridge (I turned ours down a bit to ensure it set well) I would leave the base an hour or so before continuing.

Having cleaned the bowl of your sooper dooper mixer, throw in the juice of 3 lemons, their rinds (grated, of course) the three tubs of cheese, and a tablespoon of icing sugar. Give it a good mix, but don't mix it for too long because the mixture might split. Add icing sugar to taste.

Pour the mixture over the base, spread it out and pop it back into the fridge to set.

Before we served ours, we turned it out onto a clean baking sheet (so it was upside down) then turned it the right way up onto a nice plate. It didnt crumble at all because it was so cold.. but beware! If you leave it to warm a little before you serve it, it may be pretty crumbly. Our first slice was a disaster, the rest not so bad :-)