Raspberry Summer Pudding (Page 829)

RECIPE #1179
Date: Sunday, July 4, 2010 -- 1pmLocation: East Lansing, MIKitchen: Our New House!Dining Companion: MattyRecipe Rating: C+

This one was on the list generated by the random number generator. I had put off making this dessert for years because while I love pretty much everything called "pudding" in America, English puddings just aren't my thing. I no longer have the option of being so picky though, so I finally bit the bullet and made this recipe. I lined a charlotte mold (a gift from Vero and Philippe -- thank you!) with plastic wrap. Then I lined the bottom and sides of the mold with white bread, overlapping slightly. I cooked some raspberries, strawberries and sugar with some raspberry liqueur then used a sieve to separate the solids and the syrup. I layered the fruit solids and white bread in the mold, poured some of the syrup over the top layer of fruit solids, and topped with bread to cover. I then weighted the pudding down with 2 pounds of canned goods and refrigerated it for 12 hours. To serve I unwrapped and inverted it, then spooned the reserved syrup over it and garnished with fresh fruit.

This dish was, well, exactly what I expected. The fruit had a good flavor but it was surrounded by soggy white bread. Ick. And actually the texture of the fruit was a little gross too. It was cooked to a mush, which generally wouldn't bother me, but paired with the soggy bread it just didn't work for me. All that said, if you don't have an aversion to soggy bread like I do, you might well like this dish. My special gentleman wasn't crazy about it, but he did eat the entire thing over the span of a couple days.

The recipe in The Book is almost the same as this one, except that the one in The Book calls for strawberries and raspberries rather than just raspberries.

Well, a week and a half after we arrived I am still not feeling so settled in Michigan. It seems that my special gentleman and I have both been very busy over the last ten days, yet there is still so much to do. Indeed, at this point it feels a little insurmountable. We both have tons of work to do (as usual), and are trying to balance that with our efforts to get the house organized and get settled into it. My office at the university was being vacated and cleaned this week, so I was working from home. I enjoy working from home, but my home office is a disaster at the moment, and cleaning it up would require buying some filing cabinets at the very least. Which I haven't had time to do... So I sit at my desk, surrounded by huge stacks of paper and boxes and wonder when I will get to the item on the To Do list that says: Clean Office.

Indeed, I am in that phase where my To Do list gets longer instead of shorter every day. *sigh* Today I tried to learn about yard care. Luckily, our friends who were staying in our house while we were in California did an awesome job of taking care of our yard. So it was looking pretty good when we got back. But today we headed out there to do some lawn care ourselves: we needed to reseed some bare patches, prune the hedges, pull weeds, trim back the overgrown plants, etc... Before we could start we made a fun trip to Home Depot where a nice man kindly advised us on all sorts of things. I think he realized we were clueless/new homeowners when it came to his attention that we didn't even own a hose. And we were clueless. We have a lot of plants and some areas around the house are very densely occupied by plant life. Picking out which were weeds wasn't easy. Luckily we live in a neighborhood where a lot of neighbors stop by to chat whenever you are outside. I solicited a lot of advice throughout the afternoon and gained a little yard care confidence!

One thing I can say about home ownership: I am learning a lot!