This Week

I'm back to writing lists to try and remember all the things I want to do.

Picking up apples
Those windy days last week didn't do the apples much good at all. I've already picked up lots of cooking apples, peeled and sliced and cut off the bruises, dipped them in salt water and put 3 big bags full into the freezer.

A job for today is starting to make cider vinegar
Also using windfalls with the bruises cut off - a mix of eating and cooking apples

Yesterday I made fruit cakes
 I like fruit cake to be light and soft, Colin liked fruit cake to be firm and solid. The Victorian Christmas cake recipe on the separate recipe page is what I used to make for Christmas and with less fruit for the rest of the year and it's quite a heavy cake. So I tried a new recipe that I'd photocopied from somewhere sometime. I offered youngest daughter a piece when she was here and she knew straight away that it wasn't the usual fruit cake  and said it tasted like a shop one and that's what I prefer.
This amount is 1½ the recipe and makes 2 loaf fruit cakes (so I could use my loaf-tin liners prize for the cake I entered in the show in August!)
Quick and Easy Fruit Cake
12oz softened butter (I used Stork for cakes)
12oz dark muscovado sugar
1½ tablespoons black treacle
4 large eggs
12oz SR flour
3tsp mixed spice
2 tsp baking powder

Mix all the above together then fold in 3 grated eating apples and 15 oz mixed cherries and sultanas,
Divide into 2  loaf tins and bake in a preheated oven  for about an hour at Gas 4 ( 160 ° C fan oven) until a skewer comes out clean.
Freezes well.

I must cut back the lavender

There are 3 indoor  hyacinth bulbs that need planting

I bought some ericaceous  compost to top up the Camellia in its tub

All the pots I washed last week need putting away and the rest need washing.

The field is covered in twigs after the windy weather and I need to pick them up and put them to dry.

That will do for a start

Back Tomorrow
Sue