Anne’s Americanized English Christmas Pudding

Stir together:

            1/2 cup flour

            Pinch salt

            Breadcrumbs – 2 slices of bread whirled in a food processor

            1 cup brown sugar

            Lemon rind if you have any

            ¼ cup cocoa (first American aberration)

            1 Tbsp cinnamon

            1 tsp nutmeg

            1 tsp ground cloves

            1 tsp allspice

Measure 5 ½ cups of fruit in another bowl:

            3 cups raisins

            1 cup dried cranberries

            1 ½ cups candied fruit

            Some chopped almonds, if you like nuts

            Or whatever ratio of the above that you like

Melt about ¼ cup butter or margarine.

To the dry ingredients, add the melted butter, 2 eggs and about ¼ cup of brandy or fruit juice.  Stir well and add to the fruit.  At this point, call everyone in the house to the kitchen.  It’s traditional for all to take a turn at the stirring while making a wish.  I personally think this is done so that everyone will have a stake in the outcome and will agree to eat some on Christmas Day.

Grease a five cup Pyrex bowl, put in the fruity batter, cover with aluminum foil, and steam on high in a crock pot for about 6 hours.  When it’s cool enough to handle, remove from the crock pot, let it cool, cover with plastic wrap, and store in an airtight plastic bag in an unreachable corner of the refrigerator until Christmas.  Haul it out the day you are serving it, replace the plastic wrap with aluminum foil, and steam it in the crock pot again for about two hours.  You’ll be sorry if you forget to remove the plastic wrap.  It won’t matter if you forget the pudding while it’s steaming, because 4 or 5 hours wouldn’t harm this indestructible blob.

Brandy butter.  Cream together:

            Half a stick of butter

            1 cup confectioner’s sugar

            A little milk, just so there is something virtuous in there

            Add brandy – as much as it takes.  Our family doesn’t drink, but oh! do they like a generous portion of tipsiness to drown out the pudding!  Come to think of it, go back and double everything above.

Serve with flair.  Run a thin knife around the edge of the pudding to loosen it.  Cover with a pretty plate and turn both together so that the upside down plate is now right side up, and the pudding is on its head.  It won’t get a headache, although you might if you eat too much brandy butter.  It’s important that you unmold the pudding while it’s quite warm.  Pour a little brandy in a cup or bowl and warm for a few seconds in the microwave.  The last time I did this, I probably used a quarter of a cup, and it was too much.  The silly thing burned for five minutes and almost singed the children’s hair.  So, let’s say less than ¼ cup brandy warmed for 10 to 15 seconds.  It needs to be hot but not boiling.  Make sure all guests are watching as you pour the hot brandy over the pudding and immediately touch a lighted match to the bottom.  If you use too much brandy, the family will have time to sing ALL the verses of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” before the flame goes out.  If you used a paper plate to avoid having to wash the dish, the plate will now self destruct, ruining the pudding.  Settle everyone at the table and divide up the brandy butter, and all will go home happy.  Ideally, you’d slice the pudding and pass the brandy butter to the children first so that Uncle Jim doesn’t hog it all for himself.  This isn’t going to work, anyway, because the pudding will crumble.  You might as well just use a spoon to dole it out.  It’s really better if no one looks at his plate while eating because the pudding looks like a mess or worse.  You might start a discussion of Christmas customs in England, bringing in Scrooge and some of the ghosts if you need to scare anyone into submission.

As they say in England, “Happy Christmas!”

Alzheimer’s Watch

I am inviting everyone we know to be on our Alzheimer’s watch team.  One of us has Alzheimer’s disease, but neither of us knows which one.  What a quandary!  I’ve dreaded this day for 45 years, always assuming I’d be the one watching others for telltale signs.  That was a silly assumption, but I was young and ignorant.  I’m now on super alert, knowing my name is at the top of the list, right next to John’s.  I know they say you don’t have Alzheimer’s disease if you are concerned about it, but what exactly does that mean?  I can worry about all sorts of things, including losing my mind.  It just comes naturally!  There is one bright thought, however.  I spelled the “A” word correctly without looking it up.  That’s a vote in my favor, isn’t it?

Last night I reached for scissors in the kitchen junk drawer and came up with a bag of rotted lettuce.

“John!” I shouted.  “Look what I just found!  This bag of lettuce was in the scissors drawer!  It’s rotten!”

I wouldn’t doubt my tone was accusatory, because I certainly don’t remember putting cut up lettuce in a drawer.  Who would do such a thing?

John answered, “I was looking for that.  I wanted to make myself a salad and couldn’t find it.  That’s why I bought more at the grocery store today.”

His words implied he couldn’t have lost the lettuce, because he was actively looking for it.

We are at an impasse.  Neither will actively accuse the other of doing something stupid, but the bag of lettuce is floating in our minds like a festering sore.  There is no telling what silly thing could happen next that will make us doubt our sanity.  That’s a no brainer.

Some of you might point out that we are often alone, though not always.  Kate, David and Nate are in our kitchen on a biweekly schedule.  Given their young ages, it would be a bit unreasonable to attach the “A” stigma to one of them.  The other alternative is to label the lousy lettuce an accident.  I can’t quite imagine sweeping a bag of produce into a drawer with scissors, but it is humanly possible.  I hope you don’t mind, but if any of you witness us in a mindless action, please let both of us know in writing and keep a copy yourself.  Thank you.

Post Script   It was just about 24 hours after I threw out the rotten lettuce that John and I were standing in the kitchen when Nate came in.  He opened the refrigerator door, shut it quickly and turned toward the junk drawer.

He said, “That’silly!  I started to put the scissors in the refrigerator!”

John laughed out loud, while I exaggeratedly held my hand over Nate’s head and pointed down.  We had to tell him the whole lettuce story.  He found it amusing, but I’m not sure he understands that he will now be on the “A” list as a prime suspect when something goes missing.  No, maybe not.  Eleven would be a preposterous age to get “Old Timer’s Disease.”

A Chocolate Conversation

In the office Margaret keeps telling me that Kevin is a stitch, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to him often enough to see his fun side firsthand.  Today I did.  When Kevin came up to the kitchen to get some soda, I asked, “You haven’t forgotten about the rum cake in the refrigerator, have you?”

He replied to my question, “I never forget about desserts.”

“I didn’t think I did, either, until I found a stash of chocolates one time,” I said.

He claimed, “I would NEVER forget about chocolate.  I remembered about the Halloween candy from last year.”

“What about it?”

“It was locked in the little home safe we have,” he replied.  I thought that was a bit extreme but didn’t say so.

“We just found the key for it.”

I asked, “Did the children remember?”

He said, “I don’t know.”

I thought about the ramifications of that for a moment and asked, “Have you been eating it?”

“Of course,” Kevin said.  “They don’t need it because they now have a new supply from this year.”

I laughed delightedly at this frank revelation and said I would have done the same thing.  He is a man I could see eye to eye to.

I said, “You may OD on it one of these days.”

“There is no chance of that,” he said.  “There isn’t much left.”

Commuter Mode

Husband John, grandson Nate and I set out for New Jersey last night after I came home from work.  It was daughter Kate’s 40^th birthday, and we wanted to have a tiny celebration with her to mark the day.  John is nearly always in commuter mode.  I define that as being sure that you’re going to win the traffic game as long as you are moving.  Last night John was in classic commuter mode, and that’s how we came to go from sea level on Long Island to New Jersey via the mountains.

Back to last night:  We hadn’t gone far before John tuned the radio to traffic and weather.  There was the dire prediction that we’d sit on some notorious parkway for half an hour.

“We’re NOT going to sit on the Cross Bronx for three hours.  I’ll try something else.”

That was the story of the whole trip.  After we were on the first alternate road, electronic signs said to expect delays. Although John is left-handed, he kept edging to the right with each successive announcement of jammed traffic.  The cars on the road were not necessarily stopped ahead, but a pessimist or a true commuter would jump to that conclusion.  By the time we were well north of the city, Nate was sound asleep.  In the dark, no one could see that I was glassy-eyed and hardly able to focus on the hint of interesting scenery sliding past.

John crowed, “We may have put on extra miles, but we kept moving.  That’s better than sitting still, looking at somebody’s bumper, isn’t it?”

Husband detected a bit of disagreement in my silence.  I could tell he was feeling victorious, whereas I had lost all feeling in my back side an hour before.  I finally mumbled something about I was glad he was driving and not me, which was a true statement as far as it went.  By then I was dreaming of my own warm bed far behind us.  I will say traffic was moving well across the Tappan Zee Bridge.  I called Kate to tell her we were off the bridge and traveling south.  I didn’t know it then, but we would soon be crawling, not traveling, behind a big truck on a two-lane road.  We also stopped for cheap gas, because that station would be closed when we left for home.  I watched the clock, hoping we’d make it before Kate and Michael’s bedtime.  Their house was dark as we pulled in the drive, although there was a small light shining feebly next to the garage.  Nate, now awake and eagerly wanting to present his mother with her gifts, leaped from the car and charged up the front steps.  If Kate and Michael had fallen asleep, they covered it well.  They were graciousness personified as they served huge mugs of hot tea and Michael’s delicious strawberry cake.  The least we could do was sing Happy Birthday, but we forgot that fine point in the relief of having arrived at all.  We might have outstayed our welcome before we arrived, but we settled down at the dining table as if we were wanted guests.  Maybe we were – you know how the posters read – wanted, dead or alive.  After an hour’s visit, we headed home, making it in one hour and twenty minutes instead of three hours it took the first time.  We stumbled back in our house, and my dream of being in a warm bed came true an hour before midnight.  It’s a good thing that we don’t commute to New Jersey or anywhere else on a daily basis.