What happens if...

Our NZ friend says... "What happens if you make it in a mug with gluten-free self-raising flour and are stupid enough to add baking powder as well! I have a few gluten free friends and have slightly adapted the mug recipe for them too. The answer is..."


I'm not sure what a 'gluten free friend' is. Maybe it's a New Zealand thing: do they make gluten free people there?

Meanwhile on a Ben note... Lindy and Matt and I (Chris) went to the Solomon Islands for a week last week: for a preaching conference and some time out. It was interesting how it helped to be in a place where Ben wasn't. If you know what I mean...

A year ago... (from Chris)

It's almost exactly a year ago that Ben announced "I've got cancer" in his matter of fact way. The small lump on his leg that was thought to be a cyst was diagnosed as some sort of cancer. But there are all sorts of cancers and my response was "So what does that mean?"

Little did any of us know at the time what lay ahead and that he would be gone less than six months later.

Chocolate slinging match

Well, the chocolate is starting to fly: various recipes are coming in and yes, 'NZ friend' has given us her chocolate-pudding-in-a-mug recipe too. All the details can be found in the comments section on the original blog immediately prior to this one. Just click the comments link to see them. Ben would have liked a food fight.

Chocolate plagiarised(?) pudding - from Lindy

Ben texted me once from somewhere in Victoria when we were still in Tucumán to ask for 'the choc. pudding' recipe. I've also had international phone calls and emails on the subject. It seemed that he never quite got around to writing it out himself.

I have always and only used the PWMU or Women's Weekly 'original' and Ben 'bettered' this by looking up the recipe on line. He then sent me the 'improved' recipe and said that I would find it better than the recipe I always used. He was right. I haven't looked back :-)

I presume these recipes are all public domain and so shall proceed with what must be just as old as Vegemite!

Pudding
60g butter
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup SR flour
3/4 cup castor sugar
1 tablespoon coca

Sift dry pudding ingredients into a mixing bowl or whatever you have... Melt butter in microwave until liquid. Add milk and vanilla to butter. Pour onto the dry ingredients and give them all a belt around with a wooden spoon until the mixture is a nice creamy brown colour. Grease an ovenproof dish; the deeper and narrower means the pudding will have more sauce rather than it drying up.

Topping
3/4 brown sugar (I often use white as I often don't have brown in the cupboard)
1 tablespoon cocoa
2 cups hot water

The topping was Ben's revolutionary change. He said to mix the three ingredients together in a jug until the sugar and cocoa are dissolved in the boiling water and there are no lumps. Pour the liquid over the back of a spoon and onto the uncooked pudding mixture. Make sure your oven is nicely preheated to moderate and put the pudding in. Keep an eye on it but it should be ready in forty minutes or so.  

A challenge...
Perusing my email quickly before sitting to write out this recipe I saw that there might be the beginnings of a Chocolate Pudding Challenge. A dear friend claims that not only does her mother make the best chocolate pudding ever but that this friend herself has worked out how to make a single-serve self-saucing pudding in a mug which cooks in a few minutes in the microwave! The real sting of this challenge is that both mother and daughter are New Zealanders! Are we just going to take this cross-Tasman one-upmanship? Let's hear from those who can better that. And yes, dear NZ friend, we will publish your revolutionary pudding-in-a-mug if you send it to us. Ben would have loved that one.

Tennis - sort of... From the grandparents.

Once upon a time...

These memories are timeless now. Always in the present.
Ben. Benny, I say each time I pass his photos on the table.

It was decided, when all grandsons were here at the farm, to go to the Gundowring tennis courts for a hit. Some of us had a bit of an idea of the game, but none were truly competent. Some hadn't hit a tennis ball for at least 20 years. Some had hardly held a racquet. But Ben quickly got us all into the swing of things, enthusiastically keeping score, commentating, and conducting affairs as if we were competing in the finals of the Davis Cup. Any contact with the ball was enthusiastically acclaimed "Shot!!" in a loud roar. Most of us were doubled over with laughter at the Prince of Clown's performance. The tennis was necessary for the commentary, but without the commentary the tennis would have been quite forgetable. Ah Ben.

Cerro Torre-Patagonia-2005

It's six months today since we said goodbye to Ben. Half a year on and I still look at his photos with a dazed look and wonder ... wordlessly ... and sniff away the tears.

Chocolate pudding?

Ben loved Lindy's chocolate pudding. But it was a tricky one... How to get the balance just right? The culinary danger is that it will either turn out dry and sauceless or an island of pudding in a sea of sauce. I'm not sure where Ben got the idea from but he came up with a plan. So stay tuned while I encourage Lindy to put "Ben's new improved chocolate pudding recipe" on the blog...