Winding down vacation

As the snow falls outside...


...I have decided I want pudding. Not pudding from a box, but rather old-fashioned steamed pudding. I've been craving this for weeks. I had all the ingredients I needed, but no pudding mold, so I would have to improvise. I found a tin that was fairly sanitary, but I could only find three rubber bands so the risk of water leaking in was very, very high.

What were the ingredients, you ask? Rice, sugar, butter, lemon juice, lemon rind, and eggs. Eight eggs. (I think it's funny that as cholesterol concerns have risen in the past half dozen decades, the popularity of old-fashioned rich puddings has seriously declined.) This recipe would make a sort of a egg-bake sort of pudding, but sweet as opposed to savory.

This is what I wanted: a cast-iron pot bubbling and hissing on the stove for hours and hours.


And inside, a pretty surprise!


The rubber bands kept snapping due the heat (and the fact that they were very old and brittle). Mum has this kitten whose favorite toy are rubber bands, and the kitty is always carrying them around and dropping them off at the feet of whoever is available so she can play fetch with them. I kept wishing that kitty would show up so I would have more rubber bands for my pudding-tin! (She's all "wubber band delibbery!!")

As it bubbled I picked up the knitting needles. The left panel is all done (14" X 30"):


And here comes the right panel, with that marvelous red:


The pudding boiled for two and a half hours, and I think the water stayed out most of the time, but when I went to pick it up I heard this sluuuuuuuuurrrrppp bubble bubble sound, and when I opened it my pudding was swimming (just a little).

So I plopped the yellow mush into a casserole dish and stuck it into a warm oven to dry out a little. While it was doing that I made a sauce of lemon juice and strawberry preserves.

The verdict?

It looks like scrambled-egg puke. With strawberries.


As long as I don't look directly at it I can manage to eat it. It doesn't taste all that bad. It's very sweet (two cups of sugar and only about 1/2 cup lemon juice-- my lemons were pretty small), but the lemon-and-strawberry-sauce I made to go over it was nice and sour. Next time, I will use less sugar, less butter and more lemon juice. And I will have to find myself a better pudding mold. Someday I would like to make a real plum pudding for Christmas, but you have to start small, right? :)