Christmas Eve cookery

I am being brave and attempting to make a plum pudding for the very first time. I blame minnehaha K and B, who invited me to their home for a wonderful live reading of A Christmas Carol. I plan to take some pictures to show you how it turns out.

We will be having a quiet Christmas at home by ourselves. Rob works today until 6 pm (curse you, retail America) and he is going into work at 4:00 am on December 26 and working for three hours, and then is heading to the doctor's, where we will get the results of the PET scan from last Friday and learn then if he has chemo that day. Consequently, it just wasn't convenient for us to travel anywhere to join the family (thinks of the rest of the family enjoying Christmas at my sister's cabin. Sigh). Oh well. We will have beef tenderloin and plum pudding to console ourselves!

Happy holidays to everyone near and far. Pictures (I hope) of plum pudding construction to follow.

I've been seeing a lot of this lately

Chemo is hard. December is hard.

This sight warmed my heart when I got back from work earlier this week.

Making the plum pudding, step by step

Cutting butter into the flour and spices:



Greasing the pudding mold


Adding the dried fruit. So much dried fruit.



Adding the bread crumbs:



A crucial ingredient!



Ready to add the batter to the mold:



Ready to go into the pot:



A rack is set in the bottom of the pot:



Putting pudding in to steam:



Water is added up halfway the height of the pudding mold



We will let you know how it turns out!

Christmas Eve dinner

We started with some Pomegranate Punch. (The leftover champagne will be finished up with the mimosas tomorrow morning).





Here was the finished plum pudding. I took pains with the presentation (and yes, I DID go out and fight the crowds to go to the grocery store just to buy a sprig of holly to put on the top).



We may have not let it sit a day, but naomikritzer's notthatedburke's recipe for hard sauce still turned out wonderfully.

I attempted to light it with brandy, but I didn't use a high enough proof alcohol. We DID achieve a flame, but not long enough for me to capture it with the camera. We all agreed that we witnessed it, however!



Verdict: I liked it and did not miss the sugar I forgot to add into the recipe. With the hard sauce and dried fruit, it was more than sweet enough for my taste. Rob and Fiona allowed as they were glad to have tried it and wouldn't mind it making an occasional appearance in the holiday rotation.

Delia tried it, too, but with her sensitivity to texture, she found it rather confounding. I was pleased that she tried it at least. Even if she didn't enjoy eating it, we sure had fun making it, and that's what I'll always remember about it. And at least it's something we can all say we've tried.