Chocolate Pudding, some like it hot

I have a fairly simple recipe for making chocolate pudding, only thing is it seems to take way too looonggg to cook. The other night, I was stirring and stirring and after an hour I finally gave up and had something in-between pudding and chocolate milk. It wasn't so bad. I like to eat it when it's hot. The next day what I hadn't already gobbled up was a bit more like pudding. I like to eat it when it's cold also.

I have made the recipe before and don't remember it taking so long. It wasn't ever an instant or even quick fix, it maybe took 1/2 an hour to pud (get thick). After all that preparation, sometimes I would eat the whole batch in one sitting.

I used to like the store-bought kind until I had homemade. My recipe is in a cookbook that a friend gave me years ago called Homemade Groceries (something like that). That and another book a friend gave me have turned out to be long-time favorites of mine. I can't remember anymore who gave them to me but thanks to you friends, God knows who you are, (who probably will never actually read this).

Red Food for Valentine's Day

I do enjoy eating certain foods with certain holidays.

But, I heard Nigella Lawson, on her cooking show, using the term "prinking" by which I think she meant being overly fussy about serving food. I would say I'm generally not fond of prinking. (I have come to use that word prinking to mean anything I feel that I am being over fussy about.) Well, so is it prinking (or prinkish) to be overly fussy about Valentine's Day food, or is it fun? I guess it depends on what is "fussy" and what isn't. It might depend on my mood how something strikes me. I once made a mouse out of a radish to decorate a veggie platter ... maybe prinking. The root of the radish just looked like a mouse tail to me. I guess one could cut beets into a heart shape, hmm....

Just in time--actually, a bit early--for Valentine's Day, I made some borscht. In case you didn't know, borscht is beet soup. The recipe I was using called for beets and tomato sauce which combination made a very red soup. I can't decide if I liked the color of it. Looking at a bowl of everything colored red, including the potatoes and cabbage, um well it was certainly red, but not so appetizing, I think. Sour cream is added to it to serve, so it ends up looking a smeared red and pink.

Honestly, I have yet to make a batch of borscht that I really was crazy about. But I have tasted some that I liked. I don't remember how it looked.

I had this craving for beets and after I had gotten some I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them. I ended up fishing a good bit of the beets back out of the soup and putting them on some greens with an olive oil dressing. That I love. I finished off the remainder of the soup rather slowly.

Maybe better to stick with making a heart-shaped strawberry cake for your Valentine, if you have one. My brother's girl friend made one for a Valentine's celebration at their dance group. I've been enjoying eating the left-overs. And actually, it was attractive and yummy!