12/24/2003 Update - Yeah!!! Jenny's mom sent another plum pudding! We shared it with a group of friends Christmas Eve. My favorite comment "No that's NOT enough, I need twice as much!!!"
One of the things that I (probably most of us) enjoy about the holiday season, are the traditional foods that grace our tables, and add to our waist lines. I grew up on roast beef and yorkshire pudding, with all the trimmings. We probably had turkeys some years, and I recall one memorable year where there was a goose! (goose fat cookies are weird, but we ate them anyway). However, my very favorite part of Christmas food was, and remains, my mom's plum pudding. Plum pudding shares bloodlines with fruit cakes, but are moister, heavier, and taste very very good. I remember watching her make it, smelling the fragrance filter through the house, the intriguing jewel toned dried fruit, and the relationship she developed with the butcher in order to acquire the suet. The suet was always the hardest part.
Mom ships me a plum pudding most Christmas's, and it's a package that I eagerly await every year. I knew our holiday food traditions were handed down from my grandparents, but today she wrote me about where our tradition got started.
Here's what mom wrote:
aaah: plum pudding:
I know you've heard the story, but I feel a need to get it down in writing.
nostalgia and all. So, here goes the "history" in writing. (am writing
this down in the form of E-mail, because I'm out of printer ink at the moment.)
The first plum pudding I encountered was one made by my dad. I guess he got
a bee in his bonnet and wanted something English that year - I think it was
maybe 1959 or 1960 - the plum pudding "event" happened at 316 Dochan
Cir. One of the things I remember was his saying to your grandma "I need
a puddin' cloot" (translate pudding cloth - Geordie, you know) . So your
Grandma found an old tablecloth - I seem to remember flowers on it.........
My Dad mixed up all this goo - we really weren't watching all that closely -
well, Dad was no stranger to the kitchen - he made stews and stuff - but this
foray was pretty interesting - we'd never seen anything quite like it. So, he
mixed up all the goo, then poured the whole mess into Mom's discarded tablecloth
(translate puddin" cloot") , tied it up and dumped the whole mess
into a boiling kettle of water - where it boiled, it seems like all day..
THEN!!!!!! when it was "done", he took the mess out, hung it over
a sink in Grandma's utility room (yes - that very sink that you know) - for,
it seems to me, a month or more, but I may be exaggerating)......... and there
it hung for what seems a very long time, but I've forgotten.. just how long
......looked pretty disgusting - what with the bleeding of the "puddin"
cloot" not to mention the very "blob" nature of the thing. so,
although we wanted to humor our Dad, we really hadn't much hope that the thing
would actually be edible.
Well, surprise, when he unveiled his masterpiece, poured some custard sauce
over it, we thought we'd died and gone to heaven. heavenly cake!!!!!!! Soooooooo,
I do it in a much easier way now - since we have the steamers...... but every
time I make a Plum pudding, I think of my dad. I still use the same recipe...
oddly, it's out of an American cookbook. The challenge now, as ever, is finding
the suet!. just can't so it without real suet, of a particular type. Fortunately,
I still know a butcher who understands exactly what I need & he orders same.
So, dear one, when you partake of plum pudding (no plums in it), you are joining
a little bit of Haldane family history. fun, yes? Enjoy - some are better than
others.
love, Mom