Make steamed puddings

dental hygienist, Fern, told me about a tilapia she made. It went like this:
Procure one fresh tilapia. Spread a good tapenade (she likes President’s Choice) over said tilapia. Scatter halved grape and cherry tomatoes over the lot and bake at… eh, I will have to call her about that. She says the tomatoes char and sizzle into the olive paste and the whole thing is moist and delicious if you like that kind of flavour.

I reminded her of pissaladière, which is Ina Garten’s yeast crust smeared with a dab of crushed tomato or tomato paste, heaped with a lot of caramelised onion and sprinkled with sliced black olives and anchovies. It has the same briny character. (One bakes a pissaladière at 400˚ for 10-15 minutes.)
Stop, said Fern. You’re making me drooly. That made me laugh, because as she spoke she was wielding one of those dental hygienist suction pumps.
Tee hee!

specifically salted caramel cupcakes, which I will be making for Meirav’s birthday celebration tomorrow.

Then I got thinking about caramel ice-cream. I am not heart-stoppy about ice-cream. I think I got ice-cream and Misty of Chincoteague out of my heart a couple of decades ago. But today, heaven only knows why, I would like a scoop of Phish Food or Karamel Sutra. I would savour it like a fine wine. I would inhale it like a magnificent cigar, the way people inhale their magnificent cigars.

I shall see what kind of Ben and Jerry’s I have kicking around downstairs, and then see about those cupcakes.

means either I am too long-suffering or it is cool enough outside to bake things.

To Hades with steamed puddings, I said to Angus, who was gnawing the leg off a stuffed bear. He has an all-knowing pensive look that I like.
If the bull terrier puppy could say anything with his knitted-brow, it’d be How’s about making a Christmas baked good or two, thus getting a Virgo head start on the holidays, putting a good scent of brown sugar in the air, annihilating future bad dreams of having dessert people to feed with no dessert made and last but not least giving me a bowl to lick? Moreover, who knows your state of well-being in weeks to pass? Come, woman, to the pantry!

Good things! There are wonderful scents as one descends the stair! There is a date and walnut cake cooling on the stovetop and rum and salted pecan squares still baking. O lovely! Angus’ eyes are spinning!

Is haggis a pudding? Of course haggis is a pudding! As in:

“Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’a grace
As lang’s my arm.”

Today being Rabbie Burns Day, I dare say the steaming of a vegetarian haggis might knock some stodge out of tradition. (I got proper tradition out of my system last year with a proper Burns Night Supper with a proper haggis and proper accoutriments of chappit tatties and bashed neeps.)
I looked on google and there must be fifty thousand vegetarian haggis recipes – a far cry from a couple of years back when the notion of vegetarian haggis first caught my fancy. Everything I saw had kidney beans in it back then.
Now there’s even a vegan haggis! How great is this?

I have been steamed, and I have met many a pudding. Surely it can’t be that hard to combine the two concepts.

with a touch of melancholy in the air. I feel some kind of semisweet ache is about. Pervasive. I wonder if others sense it also? This is a good time to make bread; I’ll pound the hell out of something and bake it.

I bought a package of suet yesterday for those winter puddings.

...were too much of an x-factor with so many friends coming for dinner, so I went with a baked ginger cake that was dense and soft and puddinglike. I will still make a suety carrot pudding to try out in January, maybe for Rabbie Burns’ Day. Och, aye!

Next week I’m going out, probably on a blustery afternoon, to get the ingredients. Then I will make small carrot puddings for Christmas dinner. Some of them won’t have any mix-ins at all, but I’ll experiment with the rest.

The plan is to make Christmas puddings next month and let them steep in whatever’s on hand. I made puddings with all that candied fruit before, but I’m thinking this year I should make carrot puddings- think of that!- like dense carrot cakes with pecans, dates, and a cointreau-laced creme anglaise.