This weekend I visited my parents

and came away laden with apples from the tree at the end of their back garden.  

Whenever I visit 'home' I enjoy looking at the end of the back garden, a movie behind my eyes plays through all the transformations it has undergone.

We moved to that house when I was three, one of the end corners of the garden was a site of constant change as Dad built a series of swings and seesaws, climbing frames and rabbit hutches for us. The top picture commemorates the single occasion, during our childhood, that my brother and I sat peaceabley next to each other - we have clearly been bribed to do this with ice lollies but nevertheless ...

I can also see the excavations of our neighbours the Garthwaites, who were about to install a swimming pool.

By the following year I have grown plaits, the hutch has been replaced by a seesaw and lollies are not enough to induce my brother and I to share space nicely. The neighbours have finished their pool - I remember watching them enjoying it. That little wire-and-stick plot divider was soon to be replaced by a properly tall, un-peek-overable wooden fence, presumably because they finally got tired of my gazing over yearningly at their cool, watery fun.

There were also two apple trees at the end of the garden, one is long gone allowing the other to become fat and gnarly, it still produces an abundance of bulbous green cooking apples.

This evening I peeled and thickly sliced some of those apples, tossed them briefly in a bubbling pan of butter, muscovado sugar,  a little salt then transferred the mix to an ovenproof dish. I combined thick jersey cream with two egg yolks and vanilla essence, poured that over the buttery apples, sprinkled on cinnamon then popped in a low oven for half an hour.