MY CHRISTMAS PUDDING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14250, 22 December 1909, Page 7 (Supplement)

MY CHRISTMAS PUDDING.

BT A BACHELOR IN NEW SEALANT) WHO DID HIS OWN COOKING. " Yotr can buy them in tine," said Davie. "Yes; at on©and tenpence apiece," growled Mac. "And we'd need three; and where's the money for the whisky V' " I vote we make one," I suggested. < "Do you know how?" inquired Davifl pointedly- " No; but, I've got a recipe." " Much good that'll do you. You had a recipe for the bread." 1 This was unkind of Davis. I was not • responsible tor yeaot that wouldn't rise ■ for twelve hours, and, when it did, sent thedough crawling out of the tins all over the kitchen-table, and hanging down in;. yellow festoons on either side. I told him so. " How much will it cost?" inquired Mac, who was nothing if not economical. " I don't know. About two ' bob,' I should think." " Will you pay for it if we can't eat it!"I wais on my mettle. I said I would. "All right, then. You'd better go into tho village this evening, and buy the stuff. I'll come, too, arid get the whisky." So after supper Mac and I harnessed his old black horse, popularly known as " The polished skeleton," to my two-wheel cart, and drove slowly along the deep sandy track to the village. There were two stores there, and each prof eased to sell everything that any agriculturist could possibly desire, from a suit of dungaree to a plough, or from a pot of ink to a tin» of sardines. At the one which gave tie credit 1 presented my list. I struck a snag at once. Currants there were, and raisins of a kind, but suet—-no ! I should have to order that from the butcher; and, as ho lived at Pine Lake, seven miles away, and only came round once a week, this rather put the hat on tilings. However, old Anderton, the storekeeper, said he was. sending over to Pine Lake next morning, and would try to gel some for me. Nor was candied peel to be had, but Mac agreed with me that this was not indispensable. He thought wo could substitute a little marmalade.

Wo got the rest of the things, including a loaf of bread. We made our own bread with baking-powder, but the recipe said crumb, and our loaves didn't have any , crumb to speak of. The suet came next i day, which was the 23rd; and that evening, after a swim in the lake, I tackled the job. Davis would have nothing to do with it. He eat on the verandah and played " The Place Wher j the Old Horse Died," on his banjo; but Mac lit a corncob pipe, and perched on the edge of the wood-box with the cookery-book, and read out the recipe. "Rub ten ounces of flour into a large basin," he began. We hadn't a basin, so I I took the big wash-up pan. The flour looked lonely at the bottom of it. " Pass one pound of suet through the mincingmachine," sang out Mac. " That hangs you up. Where's your mincing-machine If" "A knife will do," I said. And, hewing off a good hunk of the greasy, yellow fat of a cow, I began to chop it. It took half an hour by the clock, and I was dripping when it was done. But it was a, fairly good job; and when I had mixed the suet and flour and breadcrumbs together the result wasn't so bad. " Wash and dry one pound of currants," were Mac's directions. This caused a . difference. Mac said anyone could see the currants were filthy dirty, and recommended hot water and powdered soap. I said that water alone was enough that they would taste the soap. So we appealed to Davis, but he was too interested in trying to pick out " Hark ! the Herald Angels on two strings to listen. So we compromised by soaking the currants in boiling water while we tried to stone the raisins. This was a gruesome job; and after wrestling with it for twenty minutes, and getting sticky up to our elbows, we chucked th« rest in as they were. The cm-rants had! swollen a good deal, and there was no chance to dry them unless we left them till morning, "so we poured off the water, and let them go at that. The eggs gave, no trouble, except that one was rather V high. Mao said that an extra glassful of brandy would settle that, but as we were short of brandy we put in whisky instead. ■;* Of course, we had no fresh milk. So we topped off with about half 'a tin of condensed milk and; a quarter of ,a pot of home-made marmalade, and mixed it all,« as the,recipe said, "with both hands." By ' this time the big saucepan was boiling hard, and' we were quite ready (j to start cooking. ' Then came the worst hang-up of all. "Put the mixture in a tin form," read out Mac, " which should be well buttered. The tin should have a well-fitting cover, which should be buttered also."

"What the dickens is a tin form?" I asked bitterly. ".I thought the beastly thing was boiled in a cloth. I'm going to put it in a cloth." But Mac insisted that we must stick to the book. He went off and rummaged in his room, and came back with an armful of empty tobacco-tins. They fairly reeked of cut plug, but Mac vowed ho could get the smell out by washing, them; and by , boiling them with a lot of soda he eventu- ; ally did. • It was nearly ten before we finally got the pudding mixture stowed in the largest tin. which had first been well boiled an<{ buttered. We buttered the lid, too, amiput it on tight. : " Boil for six hours," read Mac complacently. " And be sure to keep the water 'furiously boiling.'" > " Great Scott! have I got to sit up till four in the morning?" I asked in dismay. Mac said he supposed so, but afterwards magnanimously volunteered to be roused, at two and take a watch. So he went to bed. and I stoked up vigorously and that water boiled furiously for the space of four hours. I had finished the Weekly News to the last adventisement before the clock-hands reached two, find then at last lugged out Mac, sleepy and protesting. * It seemed to me that I had hardly got to sleep before someone fired a gun under my bed, and I reached the middle of the room in one jump. There was an awful howling and thumping going on down below. When I reached the kitchen there was Mac bounding round the place like a cat in a fit, screaming and picking up lumps of black, oily stuff off himself. The whole place was spattered with something that looked like tar and smelt like plumpudding. " W-w-w»at —" I began. "Your infernal pudding!" howled Mac. It blew up !" I rushed to the stove. It was quite true. Mac had gone to sleep, the water had boiled away and the pudding, fastened tight in its tin, had generated ? steam, until at last the "tin form" would »~tand no more. The whole thing had gon« off like a shell. . ■ After all, we dined on tinned puddings.

" How do you sell your Christmas music?" asked the prospective customer, " It depends on the kind you want," replied the smart clerk. "We cell piano music by the pound and oraan music by the choir."