Christmas Pudding, Stirred-Up on Sunday

The time? Just a few days ago. The occasion? Stir-Up Sunday, the date on which households around the world, for eons upon eons, have prepared their holiday plum pudding.

What do you mean, you forgot to celebrate Stir-Up Sunday?

Until just one year ago, I too, was a plum pudding novice. That was until Jill from Ottawa and I initiated our cross-continental celebration of Stir Up Sunday and the traditional lighting of the Christmas Pudding.

For those of you who just joined us, Jill and I met while pounding veal into paper-thin cutlets at La Varenne cooking school in Burgundy in September 2006. Since she lives about 400 miles away, we will periodically cook together virtually, although on occasion, we have actually cooked together in person. See “The Tale of Two Puddings” for last year’s holiday culinary collaboration, “The American-Canadian Cooking Project” and “A Locally Grown Canadian Feast.”

Stir-Up Sunday is known in England as the Sunday before the first day of Advent, but it is also the day to prepare Christmas Pudding, a steamed dessert of dried fruit, spices, and butter or suet. Family members each get a chance to stir ingredients into the batter and tradition allows them to make a wish with each stir. The steaming technique gently cooks the fat in the batter, and allows the pudding to slowly expand over several hours.

Last year, we gave scrupulous attention to our Christmas Pudding project. We researched the history of this yuletide dessert, we investigated the benefits of ceramic and tin pudding molds, and we debated over just the right recipe. We checked in on each other’s progress by the hour, praised the virtues of hard sauce, and made a big fuss over the ceremonial flaming of the pudding.

This year, it’s been more like “Fa la la la la, la la la la!”

Jill was feeling under the weather last week, so she decided to go with last year’s recipe for the sake of expediency. I am a chronic experimenter, and wanted to try something new. Yet I am also starved for free time. I’m also not sure I want to go the beef suet route this year. Jill had used a recipe with butter which looked quite nice. So I dip into the classic “The Frugal Gourmet Celebrates Christmas” where I find a festive recipe for Steamed Date Pudding with Whiskey Sauce. Once the ingredients are combined and steaming in the pot, it is a mere two hours to completion. That gives me plenty of time to catch up on back-logged episodes of the Bionic Woman.

The Frugal Gourmet being, well, frugal, means that the recipe is a little low on alcohol. There is a whipped whiskey sauce that can accompany the dish, but I want my Christmas Pudding to be boozy, completely drenched in liquor. I locate a bottle of 80 proof Irish whiskey that has been aging (or perhaps neglected) in the cellar for nearly 20 years and go to work. I submerge the dates in whisky overnight, and I plan to soak the cheese cloth, that I will use to wrap the completed pudding before storing it for up to four weeks. With the really important ingredients accounted for, Sunday morning arrives and I realize that the recent Robert E. Lee Cake has completely depleted my cache of butter, so I must run out to the market at the last minute to pick up a fresh supply.

So much for making that list and checking it twice.

While at the grocery store, I suddenly experience a carnivorous craving and also purchase all the ingredients for a slow cooker dinner of polish sausage, apples and sauerkraut. At least I’m keeping consistent with the cooking techniques of the day, but clearly, the omission of beef suet from the pudding recipe has left me feeling deprived.

Meanwhile, up in Canada, Jill has invited several friends with their toddlers to help assemble the pudding and make wishes. Kitchen helpers! Why didn’t I think of that? In addition to assembling plum pudding, she is serving apple cider-cheddar soup for lunch, which frankly, I find incredibly ambitious. Her lunch guests have gotten into the holiday spirit and bring her a gift of a "spurtle" to use for stirring the pudding. I can’t quite decide if it looks like a culinary tool or a blunt instrument from an Agatha Christie mystery. Jill writes: “I'd never heard of or seen a spurtle before, but a little research informs me that it is a traditional Scottish tool for stirring porridge. I'm not sure that it's a traditional tool for stirring plum pudding, but it did the trick.”

I just use one of those space-age silicon spatulas. No sense of tradition, whatsoever.

Jill is matter-of-fact about her Christmas Pudding results: “It looks...well... just like last year's.”

Back in the States, I am deep into preparation. In addition to dates, the recipe contains butter, honey, lemon zest and chopped pecans. I toast the pecans for a special touch. The batter mixes up quickly with my KitchenAid, which I’m certain Mrs. Crachit never had access to in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” I snap the lid of my tin mold shut, place it in the steamer, and position myself in front of the television for the next several hours. I don’t smell much in the way of spices, but the sauerkraut and beer is really tempting the old nostrils.

About 120 minutes later, I return to the steamer and the results are heavenly. The lofty pudding is a golden-honey color and it slips easily out of the mold. It has the subtle aroma of warm spices, conjuring up mental images of gingerbread and visions of sugar plums. I wrap the finished pudding in gauzy cheese cloth, drenched in Irish whiskey, and tuck it into the back of the refrigerator for a long winter’s nap.

It all takes about as long as an episode of Iron Chef. Which means I now have plenty of time to focus on the real joys of the holiday season – like online shopping! (I’m just kidding, Dad!)

©2007 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

A Tale of Two Puddings - The Lighting of the American Plum Pudding

Exactly 28 days after its creation, my American Plum Pudding is ready for its fifteen minutes of fame.

In the morning, I busy myself preparing the house for the ten guests who will arrive at 3:00 for the ceremonial lighting and tasting. I have one final piece of preparation. A Christmas Pudding is traditionally served with Hard Sauce. But, I’ve neglected to answer a key question -- What in the world is Hard Sauce?

I go to my most reliable source – Lynne Olver’s “Food Timeline” – where the answers are waiting. Olver cites one resource that says the origin of plum puddings can be traced back to the 15th century. She references another that says the Victorians popularized the cold, hard sauces of unsalted butter, sugar and alcohol. The warm, fruity pudding melts the hard sauce, and the burning brandy is a symbol of the rebirth of the sun. I find one other piece of folklore. A sprig of holly with a red berry was placed on both sides of the pudding in ancient times to ward off witches. Since I grew up on a steady diet of “Bewitched” and I am generally tolerant of witches, I forgo the holly.

So, Hard Sauce is basically a cross between butter cream icing and a compound butter, with a hefty shot of brandy thrown in to liven up the festivities. It can’t be bad. I find the best butter possible – Plugra European Style Butter, which has a higher butterfat content, and I select a Brandy Butter recipe flavored with orange zest, orange juice and brandy. The fluffy mound of Hard Sauce looks like a snowball sprinkled with Grand Marnier.

The pudding, which has been reposing in my refrigerator since December 3rd, is now put back into the steamer for a quick warm-up bath.

My guests are unusually prompt and by 3:00 p.m. they are crowding into my kitchen. I pass flutes of champagne as I make the final preparations for the lighting ceremony. The steaming, coffee-colored dome of pudding is placed at the center of the table, and I warm a sauce pan of brandy on the stove.

We dial up Jill in Ottawa so she can join in the festivities, albeit virtually. After all, it is she, and her family’s antique Grimwade Quick Cooker that were the inspiration for our cross-country culinary collaboration. We do quick introductions, and I suspect that Jill wishes she had a score card to keep track of the folks standing shoulder-to-shoulder in my kitchen.

Cousin Frank prepares for the photo op, and Cousin Megan takes charge of the video camera. I drizzle the warm brandy over the pudding and into the center and light a long wooden match. I sense my guests taking a slight step back. I touch the match to the pudding and it is immediately wrapped in a very subtle cobalt-blue flame. In the background I hear murmurs of, “It’s gonna explode,” “I hope the fire doesn’t crack the plate,” and “Is that a paper plate?”

There is a tantalizing sizzle, and the fragrant aroma of warm fruit, cloves and brandy, with a glistening pool of amber liquid that gathers at the base of the pudding.

I cut the pudding into slices and each guest takes a spoonful of Hard Sauce. The response is enthusiastic and soon there is only less than a quarter of the pudding left on the serving platter. My brother Ken is particularly enamored of the hard sauce. There are luscious flavors of molasses, nutty brandy, citrus and cloves and chunky pieces of sweet fruit drenched in the buttery Hard Sauce. It has been worth the wait.

But more important, this plum pudding, so long in preparation, has the rich taste of centuries of historic holiday traditions, family gathered close and family far away, and new-found friendships.

In the evening, after all has been cleaned up and the guests have returned home, I write Jill one more time and provide a report on the day. I close with the question:

What should we make next?

Technorati Tags: christmas holidays

© 2006 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

A Tale of Two Puddings - The Lighting of the Canadian Plum Pudding

When last we left the “Tale of Two Puddings,” both the Canadian and American versions of the classic Christmas plum pudding were “aging” in the refrigerator awaiting their Yule tide debut.

On December 18th, Jill provides a status report from Canada:

“Well, a week from today will be the true test. I checked my pudding one day last week and it still seemed to be intact - and still looked and smelled good. Hope all is well with you in the frenzy leading up to Christmas.”

I’ve been afraid to check my pudding, to be perfectly honest. I’m a little nervous that if I open it, I’ll unleash Marley’s Ghost. So, for over three weeks, the foil wrapped pudding has been taking up an incredible amount of space in the refrigerator, as I try to squeeze in condiments, cheese spread and egg cartons around it. I hear an announcer disparaging plum pudding on the radio, and I stick my fingers in my ears.

The days leading up to the holiday pass quickly. There are cocktails with colleagues in Manhattan and Christmas Caroling parties closer to home where most of the singers end up wearing felt reindeer antlers. Jill checks in on Christmas Eve as holiday preparations accelerate towards the Canadian lighting of the plum pudding:

“Merry Christmas! I'm finally taking a break (and sipping a kir royale) before moving to the next stage of dinner preparations. Have baked and decorated gingerbread cookies and made blueberry white chocolate clafoutis for tonight's dessert. Now the salmon, rice and salad remain. I did manage to squeeze in some skating with my niece and nephew this afternoon. In Kingston, where my parents live (and where I am now) there is an outdoor rink behind the historic city hall, so it’s a really nice spot to skate. Artificial ice, of course, given that it's unseasonably warm here too. Not a speck of snow. Tomorrow we'll have the turkey and the plum pudding (!) And then another big feast on Tuesday when my sister and her husband and kids arrive. I'm off until Jan 3rd, so I'll have some time back in Ottawa to relax after a few days with 9 adults, 4 kids, 2 dogs and a cat. It gets a little chaotic! Hope Santa is good to you tomorrow! I'll send the pudding photos as soon as I can, possibly tomorrow evening, but Tuesday morning is more likely as we usually get caught up in a cut-throat board game on Christmas night.”

Several days pass with no word, and I’m beginning to wonder if the Canadian Plum Pudding suffered a setback. But, in fact, the delay is only the result of a large Canadian family still digesting their Christmas dinner. Jill sends a full report on Thursday night:

“The pudding was a success. It actually tasted quite good, and about half was eaten on Christmas night, by seven of us. Quite a bit of hard sauce was consumed as well. I think my father has polished off most of the rest of the pudding since then. It had a very nice texture - - not as heavy as some that I've tasted, which I expected given that the recipe had a bit of baking powder in it. The reviews were good - hopefully everyone was not just being polite! All in all, a successful project... and I'm beginning to think about next year's version. Have to run, since my niece is harassing me to let her back on the computer. I'm heading back to Ottawa tomorrow, so will have a few days to relax - and try out my new copper pot for beating egg whites - before going back to work. Hope you had a good Christmas. Look forward to hearing your pudding results. I think the big day is Saturday?”

Jill is correct. I’ve decided to squeeze every moment of entertaining out of the holiday, and ten guests will descend on my house this coming Saturday for the ceremonial lighting and tasting of the American Plum Pudding. My cousins have been instructed to bring a fire extinguisher. As they say on television – Don’t touch that dial!

Technorati Tags: christmas holidays

© 2006 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

A Tale of Two Puddings - Stir-Up Sunday

Twas the night before Stir-up Sunday, and all through the house, T.W. Barritt was learning how ill prepared he was to organize a successful plum pudding project …

I get home from New Orleans on Saturday night, anxious to get going on the plum pudding. I chop the raisins and start them simmering with the currants in two cups of water. It looks like an awful lot of fruit. The recipe calls for a large, 3-quart container. I eye the pudding mould. Then I decide to measure it. My fancy Christmas tin only holds 1 and ½ quarts. I start to scour the house for alternatives and find a second container to hold the overflow.

Meanwhile, the fruit continues to simmer. The technique seems to plump the raisins and currants, while concentrating their flavor. This produces dark, aromatic syrup that coats the raisins and currants.

Stir-up Sunday dawns, and Jill finds that the Canadian weather is adding to the seasonal mood. She writes:

It's snowing a bit here this morning, so it seems like a particularly good day for this project. Just heading out for my morning run, so I can get that out of the way before the stirring starts. I've invited a few friends for lunch to help stir the batter....but that means I have to feed them as well. Time to get moving. More later on the results.

I measure out all of the ingredients and the final step is to prepare the suet. Mom has done her part while I was gone, and the suet is waiting for me in the refrigerator. I learn from her later that the butcher didn’t even charge her. He simply wrapped up the suet and wished her “Merry Christmas!”

Last night, I cleaned and froze the suet. That makes it easy to mince the fat into tiny pieces and dredge them in flour. The suet is suspended through the mixture and as it steams, the fat melts and gives the pudding its cake-like texture.

Stir-up Sunday is all about making wishes, according to Jill. As the master of the house, I grant myself three wishes – one for the world, one for my family, and one for me. I stir the brown sugar and spices into the flour and suet and for the world, I wish for recovery for the city of New Orleans. I stir in the eggs, brandy and sherry and wish for good health and happiness for my family. I stir in the raisins, currants, dates and citron and wish for myself a challenging new recipe to learn in 2007.

The fruits are jewel-like and remind me of gold, frankincense and myrrh as I fold them into the batter. The creamy, coffee-colored batter is thick with fruit and smells like cinnamon, cloves, fruitcake, George Bailey, Clarence the Angel and Christmas at Fezziwig’s.

I fill the moulds, place my puddings in their steamers, send off an update to Jill, and start to make a few ornaments for the tree. I’ve got at least four or five hours ahead of me, tending the puddings. By early afternoon there’s still no word from Ottawa, probably because Jill is busy feeding lunch to an army of holiday helpers. Then an update arrives:

Mine's steaming as well. Smells great, and the batter tasted good! I had some tiny assistants to help stir and make wishes. I only have a half-hour left, which is great because I really need to get some Christmas shopping done today. Think I will go outside and string up the Christmas lights on my cedar tree while I'm waiting.

Jill’s butter-based plumb pudding is done before me (top photo). She writes:

Pudding looks good. House smells like Christmas. Photos to follow....

I return to the kitchen and sniff. I can’t smell anything. When I take off the pot cover, the dish towel that has been boiling at the base of the pot for several hours to anchor the mould actually makes it smell more like laundry day. There is a subtle scent of cloves, but maybe I’m too close to it.

Just before 8:00 p.m., word comes from Ottawa that the Grimwade Quick Cooker plum pudding with butter has been successfully completed. Jill provides a full recap of the Canadian version of Stir-up Sunday:

I’m up early for a morning run before the pudding assembly starts in earnest. With lightly falling snow and the sun shining through the clouds, it seems like a perfect day for pudding-making. The mixing begins at noon, with the help of my able young stirring assistants, Lucy and Thomas. Lucy won't reveal her wish, but all Thomas wants is for the cat to come out of hiding. Fortunately she obliges. But in all the excitement, I forget to make a wish! Oh well, there's always next year's pudding.

After mixing in a final dose of rum (and sampling a few tastes of the batter), the "Quick Cooker" is greased, filled, parchment paper put on top, and the lid tied on. I never did find any charms, but I think I'll slide a coin into the pudding before it's served on Christmas Day. The pudding goes into the steaming pot at about 12:30. There's a moment of panic about whether I'll be able to put the lid on the pot, but it just fits. In the meantime, I'm trying to serve lunch to some friends, so the preparations are a little hectic. No wonder I forgot to make a wish.

I check the pot every so often and top up the water. My recipe only requires about 3 hours of steaming, so at around 3:30 I decide it's time to take the Quick Cooker out of the steamer. I manage to avoid any major burns. After the pudding sits for five minutes, it's time to un-mould. The pudding slides out easily, stays in one piece, and I breathe a sigh of relief! The pudding looks and smells lovely. We'll know in 22 days how it tastes!

My recipe requires that the pudding be at room temperature before un-moulding and shortly before 9 p.m., I slide my pudding out of the mould (bottom photo). One tap and it drops onto the plate, fully intact and with a nice scallop design around the pudding. While Jill’s pudding is a beautiful amber color, mine is darker, like black coffee, and denser, and smells much like a traditional fruitcake. I worry about whether it has enough alcohol in it, but for now, I must think about returning to work on Monday and letting the plum pudding ferment in the refrigerator. Joy of Cooking says, “…the pudding will become softer, darker, and more flavorful with age.” Don’t we all?

Jill has the last word on our cross country plum pudding collaboration, until we ignite them as part of the Christmas celebration several weeks from now. She writes:

Hmmm. I wonder if pudding can be sent over the border?

© 2006 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

Technorati Tag: Christmas

A Tale of Two Puddings - The Recipes

We are rapidly approaching Stir-up Sunday and the preparation of our Canadian and American plum puddings. Jill in Ottawa is still debating over the best recipe for her plum pudding, while I’m already committed to my selection in the Joy of Cooking. Give me a recipe in a best-seller and I’m good to go. Jill writes:

Decision-making not being my strong point, I'm torn between recipes from the “Canadian Living Christmas Cookbook,” “Julia Child's The Way to Cook” (both using butter), and something from Epicurious titled "Superb English Plum Pudding" It's a James Beard recipe from “House and Garden” in 1963. I'm leaning toward the latter, but it is fairly similar to the Joy of Cooking version. Of course, I also have a tree's worth of others that I printed from the Internet. On the BBC website, I found a little piece written about an early vegetarian version that didn't contain suet but included a pound of mashed potatoes, a pound of boiled carrots and two pounds of dried fruit. I'm not sure I'd want to try choking that down!

I give thumbs down to the boiled carrots as well, but you sure can’t beat Julia Child and James Beard. I like the contrast of Canadian butter versus American beef suet and suggest that Jill might go that route.

Meanwhile, I’m embarking on my own investigation of plum pudding – the history, the lore and the technique of steaming. The Oxford Companion to Food (Davidson) says that pudding “may be claimed as a British invention, and is certainly a characteristic dish of British cuisine.” It also extols the virtues of steamed suet puddings and says the high melting point gives suet puddings a lightness not attained with other fats. Tins and moulds came into use when pudding cloths became unwieldy for the homemaker. Sweet suet puddings reached the height of popularity in the Victorian era and there was even a pudding named for Prince Albert. I also locate the definitive reference in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol:

“In half a minute, Mrs. Cratchit entered – flushed, but smiling proudly – with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.”

Jill decides to go with the Canadian Living butter-based recipe in her classic "Quick-Cooker Bowl." With fruit soaking in an 80-proof hot tub and most ingredients in hand, we are nearly ready to begin our cross-country Christmas culinary collaboration.

Next: Stir Up Sunday

© 2006 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

Technorati Tag: Christmas

A Tale of Two Puddings - Moulds and Ingredients

No sooner have Jill in Ottawa and I decided to concoct Christmas puddings in two different countries, when our plans hit a snag. We’ve already missed the traditional deadline for preparing a plum pudding. Jill writes:

Most sources I've looked at say that Stir-up Sunday is the Sunday before Advent, and since Advent starts on December 3 this year, I think Stir-up Sunday was actually yesterday. Hopefully our puddings won't be cursed by the break with tradition.

This could be disastrous. It’s like moving Abraham Lincoln’s birthday to the third Monday in February or celebrating Christmas on the 30th of December. But, I take a deep breath, say three “Hail Julia Childs” and hope for the best.

Meantime, Jill’s been gathering information on her antique crock:

I've done a little investigating into my pudding mould, which, while my mother and grandmother used it for plum pudding, is actually a Grimwade's "Quick-Cooker,”, "excellent for stews of all kinds" (according to the print on the outside of the bowl). I did a little looking around on the Internet, and the Quick Cooker appears to have been a very popular item in the first half of the 1900s. It is not particularly rare or valuable - there are lots on e-Bay - but it is a really wonderful vintage piece. On the top of the lid, there is green printing that provides instructions on how to use it, and the underside of the lid has advertising for other Grimwade items, all of which were"thoroughly hygienic" and "designed to keep out flies". Inside the bowl there are instructions on how high to fill it. On mine, it looks like the printer made a mistake, crossing out some words and rewriting them below, which is a feature I particularly like.

Jill has even traced her Quick Cooker back to Merry Olde England and finds a citation through the London Museum where a crock dated 1911 is exhibited. I’m a little jealous. Aside from its Williams-Sonoma pedigree, my tin mould is a thoroughly modern reproduction and has zero historic value.

I decide to focus on gathering my ingredients. I get an early train to Long Island one evening and head for the local Waldbaum’s grocery. It is still November but the holiday pickings are a bit slim. I find raisins, currants and brown sugar, but there is only one container of candied citron left. Is homemade IN this year? I’m surrounded by shelves of ready-to-use mincemeat and prepared pies that are untouched. Dickens would have found modern day grocery stores to be maddening …

The suet in my recipe presents a problem. I’ve got a business trip at the end of the week, and the recipe states that suet from a grocery store will not suffice. It is only for feeding the birds. So unless I want bird seed in my pudding, I need an alternate plan. I enlist Mom to make the purchase at a local butcher shop while I’m away, but I am slightly perturbed when my Dad asks, in fierce grocery store loyalty, “What’s a butcher shop?”

Jill, meanwhile, is getting closer to selecting a recipe for Stir-up Sunday, or what is now our collective celebration of the day:

Since you're going the traditional route with suet, maybe I'll try a modernized version with butter. I have read that suet makes a less heavy pudding. There are so many different recipes I'm almost tempted to make more than one pudding, but I know that my family likely won't even get through one. And after all, the pudding is really just a vehicle to deliver hard sauce...

I’ve heard that Canadians are quite practical.

Next: Choosing the Recipes

© 2006 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

A Tale of Two Puddings - The Idea

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …

Okay, maybe things weren’t so bad, but I’d spent a good portion of the week traveling and the food had been terrible. I am in need of a good culinary challenge served with a healthy dollop of holiday spirit.

An e-mail from Ottawa, Canada delivers the holiday spirit – 80 proof – and a bit of inspiration to invigorate the Christmas season.

Jill and I first cooked together – and in the spirit of full disclosure, drank a lot of really good French wine – in Burgundy, France at the La Varenne Culinary School in September. In fact, the school now uses a photo of the two of us pounding the heck out of a stack of veal cutlets as part of its series of e-mail promotions.

Her note gets me thinking. Jill writes:

Last weekend my mother gave me my grandmother's old earthenware plum pudding mould. We usually have plum pudding at Christmas dinner, but I've never made it so I am quite excited about the prospect. I have been reading about the customs of making plum pudding. Tradition has it that puddings are made on or immediately after the Sunday "next before Advent,” i.e., five weeks before Christmas, commonly known as "Stir-up Sunday.” Apparently, each member of the household is supposed to stir the batter and make a wish. Since I'm not sure how adept my cat Polly will be at stirring (or making wishes) I may have to enlist a few friends as honourary members of my household for the event. Of course there are hundreds of recipe variations, so I'm trying to find the most appealing (to me) ingredients.

I am immediately captivated with visions of sugar plums, Dickensian Christmases and Ghosts of Christmas Past. I’ve never made a plum pudding either, even though I’d bought a tin pudding mold years ago and never used it. It would be the perfect holiday project. And, think of the fun it would be to serve an incredibly boozy holiday confection to the family during the Christmas season. We could each make a plum pudding and compare notes – plum pudding by two different chefs in two different cities. Jill agrees and we set off on a cross-continental Christmas culinary adventure. I mark my calendar for “Stir-Up Sunday” (or so I think) and start planning.

I pour over the holiday cookbooks in my burgeoning collection – The Frugal Gourmet Celebrates Christmas, The Martha Stewart Living Christmas Cookbook, and many others, but the most authentic recipe seems to be in the Joy of Cooking 75th Anniversary Edition. The recipe advises that patience is required. The pudding steams for six or seven hours. That’s commitment. I imagine a stress-free day of tending the pudding, writing holiday cards, listening to music and inhaling the aromas of fragrant fruits, caramelized sugar, brandy and cream sherry.

But, before we can each partake in a Merry Christmas and a glorious flaming plum pudding finale, Jill and I both have many preparations to attend to.

Next: Pudding Molds and Ingredients

© 2006 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved