Friday morning

It's cold and misty outside at the moment.  Looking out, the mist makes everything look spooky and mysterious - I like it!  With any luck it'll evaporate away to reveal a fine, sunny day.  Yesterday's weather was very April-typical, wasn't it, with sudden, hard showers, some of which included hail.  Not nice if you were caught out in one, not nice at all.

Yesterday lunchtime I went out with a friend, J.  I suppose it was a late lunch as I got round to hers at about 1:30, but that was OK because the pub we went to, the Hare out on the Roxwell Road, was virtually empty and we had a lovely chat together without straining to hear each other because of any surrounding 'environmental' noise!  The food was good, the atmosphere nice and gentle and calming and the company was, of course, outstanding!!  All in all, it was a lovely time and it's somewhere I really must go more often, maybe in a fortnight's time when I have more visitors.

Then I set to and had a go at adapting that cheesecake recipe from last week.  The difference was that I used tinned mango and, as it was in a light syrup, I didn't add any extra sugar.  It seems to have set OK but fingers crossed that it won't collapse as I turn it out of the tin.  It'll still taste nice but . . .
You see, I have a friend coming over from Southend for lunch.  Another J!  All these Js!  She won't mind collapsed cheesecake and it would taste fine but I would be rather mortified.  At some point I have to steel myself to trying this recipe with the vege-jel, a vegetarian jelling agent that works very differently to gelatin and which I've never really used before.  But if I can get to grips with it, I can make the cheesecake for DD when she comes round on Sundays, and that would be good.

Well, I have a visitor coming and the house is not really in the state it ought to be for visitors, even one as laid back as J, so I'd better go and get it sorted.