It Might Be A Brick

My church is having a Palm Sunday bake sale and I decided to bake one of those pudding type cakes for a recipe I recently acquired.  Pudding cakes are not a regular thing for me.

The recipe was explicit, use the regular pudding mix and not the instant and I could have sworn that was what I picked off the grocery shelf.  I seem to remember that it might have been the only type in the flavor I needed.

Too late to back track since the egg mixture was already whipped up, I carried on.

If I had taken a moment to think, maybe if I added the pudding at the very last minute, I might prevent a possible disaster.  Time will tell.

 

Twenty minutes in the oven and it does look a little peculiar.

I think I will save for Easter dinner next weekend and maybe let the family members enjoy it?

Whatever, I have plenty of time to whip up the family cake for tomorrow.

Babs in the Kitchen - Why Don’t We Cook Cucumbers? *

Most of this morning was spent by this lazy and sometimes reluctant cook. 

I do my grocery shopping with very good intentions.  Sometimes, well quite frequently my plans change or fail.

A quick inventory of the fridge resulted in a cache of tired and wrinkled and not so gorgeous fresh vegetables.  A salvage operation was organized and the successful result is what I will call a dump soup.  A raid in the pantry gained a carton each of vegetable and chicken broth and 2 bay leaves, added to a sauté of garlic and chopped onion in the soup pot. More scavenging found a can of stewed tomatoes that was crushed and added then one slice of deli ham was launched to float around in the mix.  Dump #1.       

Next dump was diced carrots, celery and red pepper, and the final dump was the canned red and white beans found with the tomatoes, along with zucchini chunks and spinach.  While just a few leaves of the fresh basil looked anywhere near promising, my entire supply of fresh parsley was still in its original glory!  Chop, Chop!   A few grindings of black pepper and sea salt and for a little kick, a pinch of cayenne pepper.                 

Some of that hopeful celery was still left, so tuna salad appeared.  Was on a roll - then some egg salad was born.  Several lunches, ready to go.

Unfortunately, the English cucumber from Mexico or Canada didn’t pass muster.  I really tried.  It still looked a bit viable so it was peeled and sliced.  It was faking it as the inside was not the appetizing creamy white. And, it failed the taste test.  Too bad.  I am not sure if it could have been dumped.  I have only ever had cucumber in its uncooked state.  Does anyone cook it?

* This was an unpublished draft written who knows when but I still ask that question.