I went to the grocery store yesterday for milk and the cheesecake in
the bakery cabinet was calling my name really loudly... yelling it in
fact! lol. I haven't had any in soooooooo long because it has no
redeeming health value whatsoever, and so many calories from all the
milkfat and sugar. I was very tempted to buy a piece and eat it on the
spot, but I also realised that for very little more money I could buy
the ingredients to make a whole cheesecake myself. And they had
beautiful strawberries on sale in the fruit section...

I gathered up strawberries, a packet of marie biscuits (they make a
better crust than graham crackers because they're not so gritty, plus
they're cheap!) and hit the dairy cabinet to get some cream cheese. I
dithered around a bit there. I've always used Philadelphia cream
cheese to make my cheesecake, but they've put so much gunk into it
nowadays that they don't even call it 'cream cheese' any more! Take a
close look at the label (and the ingredients list) some day and see
what I mean... there was a store brand cream cheese but the
ingredients list was just the same as the Philly stuff. But next to
them was something called 'farmers cheese' in a little white
cream-cheese shaped packet and it had exactly three ingredients -
milk, salt, and rennet. I wasn't sure if it would work, but I figured
it was worth experimenting. It was only about thirty cents more than
the Philly junk. I stopped at the farmers market for some fresh lemons
and I was good to go.

When I got home I whipped up the crumb crust and baked it, and then I
made the filling. The cheese was softer and grainier than cream
cheese, but it whipped up just fine in the blender with the condensed
milk. I put some strawberries into the mix for colour (the condensed
milk was so old it looked like dulce de leche when I opened the can!)
and juiced the lemons. I chopped up the rest of the strawberries and
put them in the bottom of the crumb crust, and then I poured the
cheese mix on top of it and baked the whole thing for twice as long as
I usually do just to make sure it was as set as it was going to get. I
was rather dubious about it when it came out of the oven, but it set
up nicely when it cooled down, and it tasted delicious! I'll
definitely be buying that cheese again. Thank you Publix! Plus there
was a bonus - regular cream cheese has 100 calories an ounce, and the
'light' stuff has 70. But the farmers' cheese only has 40 calories per
ounce, so we saved a whack of fatty calories right there!

And how was the cheesecake? Delicious! Very soft last night, but it
firmed up overnight and this morning it was firm enough to cut a slice
and pick it up to eat without it falling apart. Yes, I admit it - I
had strawberry cheesecake for breakfast!