To pick up where I have left off, we now have four Christmas puddings. I have no idea what to do with four Christmas puds! Unlike the Christmas cakes the puddings won’t even be able to serve as building materials as they are entirely too spherical. They are very unyielding things though. I am slightly concerned by this – my past experiences have taught me to believe that Christmas pudding is a dark brown, vaguely spongy thing that comes in a red plastic bowl. Mine seem to be a slightly more Pakeha shade of pudding and made of entirely sterner stuff. Should I be concerned?
I managed to encounter another issue with the basics of cooking this weekend. I made up the mix for one of the puddings, got three-quarters (now that I’m back in 1966 I speak exclusively in fractions – ½ lb, ¾ pint, ½ breakfast cup etc) of the way through the recipe and read the words every home cook dreads. Leave overnight. Never mind – I have the worlds most useful cooking appliance – my mother – who kindly put my pudding on to steam before I got home from work so that I will not be up until midnight waiting for its allotted 5 hours to elapse.
Unfortunately however the time with the mother in the house has been prematurely shortened. I try not to take it personally that she has bought a house of her own within a week of being in the country. I think I’ll blame it on Edmonds. So in a pre-emptive strike we’ve exchanged her for the Husband’s mother for the next week. Now if she buys a house as well just to get away from me I may take it personally.
Since I have been resting on my cooking laurels a little in the last week with the mother in the house I thought I should produce something at least vaguely interesting tonight. While we had dinner cooked by the mother and her Tom I did manage to produce a not half bad Caramel Apple custard from the “Cold sweets” section. This consisted of an apple puree with a layer of caramel custard on top –I was going to take a photo but it was an entirely unappealing colour combination and totally inappropriate for a blog photo debut.
I’m not a big fan of pureed apple – can’t stand it actually – so it wasn’t going to be a big hit with me but the other members of the house downed it without complaint. The caramel custard wasn’t half bad but then I am a self-confessed custard freak so my opinion counts for very little.
I’m afraid there will be no cooking tomorrow night as I will be Christmas partying again! Stop chastising me – I have a whole year to catch up on my cooking – I’ll get there, I promise!
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I think that based on the photographs of my childhood, the 60's in New Zealand (as opposed to say...San Francisco) were composed entirely of unappealing colour combinations (part of the appeal) - don't be shy Debbie! we were there! It was all brown roman sandals, white knee length socks, hungry lambs, sweet porridge and the donkeys egg!
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