“Fruits each in its season, are the cheapest, most elegant and wholesome dessert you can offer your family or friends, at luncheon or tea. Pastry and plum-pudding should be prohibited by law, from the beginning of June until the end of September.”‘Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea’Marion Harland [Mary Virginia Terhune] (1875)
In our family, my Grandmother Lillian, always made the plum puddings and it is still considered bad luck to cut into one before Christmas. She passed the torch to me years ago. Instead of steaming the puddings in bowls with waxed paper and foil on top, tied with string, I purchased molds...at Williams Sonoma and garage sales. You can't get the molds from them anymore, that I know of, but they sell the puddings. I still pick up the molds, even though I have more than I will ever need. In the course of a traumatic divorce after almost 30 years of marriage, I had no clue where the recipe was in storage. I found the molds this year and have yet to find the recipe.
I remembered most of it and found a similar recipe on the Internet. These are loaded with raisins, sultanas (golden raisins), currants, spices, and lots of beef suet. No bread crumbs here. Each pudding comes with a silver dime buried somewhere in it's depths. The lucky recipient of the dime is supposed to have good luck for the next year.
These little beauties steam for 9 hours, so this is an all day event. They have been on since very early this morning and will need to cool once they are done so I can get them wrapped in wax paper and then in foil to get them ready to be mailed all around the US, including Hawaii.
This post is filled with memories of a woman I loved dearly and still do. The wool penny ornaments for our tree are made with large buttons my family saved for me from her stash. I think about her every time I hang them on the tree. Today, my house smells like hers did. I love you, Grandma.
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