So much to be thankful for

This was my third Thanksgiving in Montana, and I have much to be thankful for. Today I shared dinner with good friends, generous, warm-hearted people I admire and enjoy being with.

My contribution was dessert, a pumpkin cheesecake that might have been made with some pumpkin I grew myself (I certainly have enough of it), but I had a can of organic pumpkin puree about to expire, so I opted to use that.

I woke up early to make it as fresh as possible. The sun was rising, lighting up the fields and trees and distant hills. A beautiful day for a holiday!

One minute I was pressing down a gingersnap-crumb/chopped-pecan/melted-butter crust into the pan, half looking out at my car in the parking area and at the pasture beyond. The next minute, after putting the pan in the oven and turning around to look out the window again, I was watching in amazement as a herd of about 50 sheep grazed around my car.

I forgot to close the gate last night! It is a messy contraption of barbed wire wrapped around a few posts; with the slippery ice on the ground that makes it difficult to get a solid grasp of the parts to secure them, perhaps I should say here that I didnt really want to close the gate last night.

There was no one to take a photo of me, marching out in my jacket covering an apron covering my pyjamas, but there I was. I flapped my arms, but it doesnt take much to get a herd of sheep moving. One gal stood her ground, however, and glared at me fiercely, which startled me for a moment because Ive never heard of sheep acting violently. (Now Angus cows are an entirely different story: do not get between an Angus mother and her calf!)

But then I saw two lambs who had wandered onto the lawn near my house. After I shooed them in the right direction, mother and twins left happily.

And then . . . I finished making the cheesecake. I dont know how delicious it looks in my photo, but it was good in person. That blob of orange on the side was a last-minute attempt to make something that tasted like pumpkin pie since I couldnt taste the cheesecake before I took it to dinner (I thought the others might notice a piece missing), and I wondered if it was "pumpkiny" enough.

So I whipped up a bit of cream I had in the fridge (about 2 tablespoons), then stirred in the leftover canned pumpkin (about 1/2 cup) and added brown sugar (about a tablespoon) and a big dash of homemade pumpkin spice (maybe a teaspoon of the cinnamon-nutmeg-cloves mixture). It was pretty good, too.

But best of all were the loving hands that prepared the rest of the meal, which included the traditional turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce (a canned mixture called "cowboy cranberries," but we didnt know why, and here we live in Montana), along with fruit salad, garden-grown beans and carrots, homemade rolls, and homemade apricot jam.

The local women often say they cant cook, and then they outdo anything Ive ever tasted. I love potlucks here.

I hope you are as stuffed and happy as I am tonight!

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Stir Up Sunday

delicious plum pudding
made at Flavel House cooking class

"O Lord, stir up Thy might, we beg Thee." When you hear these words in the church liturgy, you know its time to make the Christmas pudding. This occurs the last Sunday of the liturgical year, which is the Sunday before Advent begins. Which this year is today.

The tradition is that everyone goes home that day, and each person in the household takes a turn to stir the plum pudding batter before it is poured into the pan to be cooked.

The Flavel House in Astoria, Oregon, has an annual Christmas tea, where you can sit in the dining room and enjoy a slice of plum pudding. One year they offered a fascinating and practical class on how to make the pudding, which got me started making my own. Im not sure if they still offer the class, but if you ever get a chance to take it, I highly recommend it.

My pudding pan is on loan to a friend in California, so I cant make a steamed pudding this year. But to choose an alternative, I thumbed through my copy of Good Old-Fashioned Puddings, by Sara Paston-Williams, which describes traditional English puddings of all types, including ones that are steamed, baked, frozen, and boiled. She also describes how to make flummeries, fools, milk puddings (which Americans will easily recognize), and trifles. Its a fun book to look through.

While you might puzzle over some names (Quantock Pudding, Taffety Tart, Poor Knights of Windsor), youll get a chuckle out of others: Pears in Nightshirts, Apple Dappy, Chocolate Puddle Pudding, Grannys Leg. We might be able to get kids -- and adults -- to eat more vegetables if we could come up with names like these for side dishes. Of course, adding chocolate or pouring on caramel sauce would help, too.

Anyway . . . I chose what I thought was an easy recipe: Durham Fluffin, which is traditionally eaten on Christmas Eve in the northeastern area of England.

I followed the directions to soak pearl barley in water overnight, then simmer it in whole milk for about half an hour. I dont know what went wrong, but there was nothin fluffin about the result at all. It was milky with bits of barley floating in it. I wasnt about to stir in nutmeg and brown sugar (splash of brandy optional) according to the directions and then eat it. Yuck.

So I got out my well-worn copy of Pure Chocolate, by talented Seattle chocolatier Fran Bigelow (thank you, Leslie, for giving it to me all those years ago), and made Princess Pudding. Now that is something to get stirred up about!

pudding fit for a princess

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