Les Bonnes Choses

The family made a trek to the Costco this afternoon to get a few things. A family of 4 doesn't generally need to buy things in bulk, but Jude's preschool requires each family to sign up for a snack week. Ours is next week, so we needed to get enough wholesome treats to feed 14 preschoolers for a week. I saw an interesting dynamic as we stood in the checkout line: a girl about Jude's age in the shopping cart in front of us was smiling, making faces and waving at Jude. Jude, for his part, was studiously avoiding her gaze, and surreptitiously casting sideways glances at her, as though he was waiting for her to tire of the whole thing and just go away. I don't know how far into the future this blog will be available, but if it's still available when he's about 14, I'd be interested to find out what he thinks of all of this. I did try to help him with his socialization by telling him that if some one is smiling and waving at you, it's good to wave back. This is especially true if the person waving at you has mistaken you for someone else, because that's your opportunity to really confuse somebody.

Interestingly, we were unable to actually purchase one of our impulse buys -- Sting's newest album, If On a Winter's Night. It turns out that the album hasn't been released yet, and therefore shouldn't have been on the floor. I suggested he let us pay for the CD and we could promise not to listen to it until Tuesday, but he didn't go for it. However, one thing that made it past the checkout was a ten-pound bag of carrots. Some of them are destined to become carrot sticks for snack week. Many of my friends came back with suggestions for what to do with the rest of the carrots. Here's one suggestion from our friends in Cincinnati. It's a Scottish pudding recipe (think: figgy pudding, not Bill Cosby style pudding).

Carrot Pudding

• 1 cup grated raw carrot


• 1 cup grated raw potato


• 1/2 cup butter


• 1 cup white sugar


• 1 cup flour


• 1 tsp baking soda


• 3/4 cup raisins


• 1/2 cup currants


• 1/2 tsp each of nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon

Cream the butter and sugar. Add carrot and half of the potato.
Dust raisin, currants with a bit of the flour and mix in.
Add the remaining flour and the nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon.
Dissolve the baking soda into the remaining potato and add to the mixture.
Mix lightly and pour into your cooking vessels, filling no more than 3/4 full. Place the cooking vessels into a pot of simmering water so that the water comes up to just shy of the height of the cooking vessel and cook at low temperature for about 3 hours. If your cooking vessels happen to be quart mason jars, you can seal them and store your jar of pudding in a cool pantry for some long while (I'm not sure, but I think that the lid is supposed to be on the jar before you start the cooking).

I'm not a fan of the raisins, so I think I'd probably substitute something deadly like walnuts instead (I'm allegedly allergic). Apparently, I'd rather die than eat raisins.