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Saturday 15 March 2014

WordPress Daily Prompt: Pour Some Sugar On Me

What is your favorite sweet thing to eat? Bread pudding? Chocolate chip oatmeal cookies? A smooth and creamy piece of cheesecake? Tell us all about the anticipation and delight of eating your favorite dessert. Not into sweets? Tell us all about your weakness for that certain salty snack.




Waffles with apples and cream


I have lots of favourites but am a little choosy. I like to know what it contains and I like the ingredients to be the best, so my taste in sweet might be a little expensive. This wonderwork of desert in the photo was really made by me. My monthly cooking magazine had developed a new kind of mould for making waffles complete with book on “How to make”. They were manufactured from silicon, a sort of rubbery new development in backing forms, so I decided to try it out. With some stewed apples (from my tree of course) and whipped cream they were perfect.

Being truthful I should really ignore all sweet stuff and eliminate it from my food plan. One of the advantages of being diabetic is that you do not really feel ill. Ok, I am one of the lucky ones and not yet on the needle, just three tablets per day and keep the carbohydrate to a minimum. My problem is that I do not like eating imitations, watered down recipes. It has to be the real thing and not some sort of substitute.

I had to have a chuckle when I saw that the first words of this prompt were bread pudding. I was surprised. Do people really know today what a bread pudding is and I mean the real thing, the one that mum made because she had some bread left over, did not want it to go mouldy and it was a cheap desert? I grew up on bread pudding. Every mum in the East End of London had her own recipe for bread pudding. Basically you soaked the bread in hot water, squeezed it out and mixed dried fruit into the soft bready mixture you had and added some sugar. Now the housewife could let her imagination run wild and use up all the stuff you had in the cupboard, but do not forget a generous spoonful of mixed spice. Perhaps a good dose of strawberry jam, or marmalade (you know the orange/lemon peel jam lookalike that all British have for breakfast, spread on bread). It was all mixed in by hand of course and this squelchy, sqeezy mixture was put into a baking tin, spread flat and baked for an hour or more, according to when it was ready. The kitchen and house were filled with aromas from the orient and smelt like the baker was having a good day.

As I said this is typically British, although it might have immigrated to the colonies over the years. Through me it also immigrated to Switzerland. There was one problem. It might not be according to Swiss taste buds, although the taste was OK. It was the consistency when baked. My family changed the name from “Bread Pudding” to “Gummikuchen” meaning translated “Rubber cake”. I never thought of it that way. It was eaten, but I decided it was not according to the Swiss way of life.

My taste in chocolate is fussy. First of all it has to be stored in the fridge. I like it cold and crispy. If it is soft and warm, I do not like it. It also has to be preferably dark black chocolate. I eat the “normal” coloured chocolate if it is from the fridge, but have my preferences. Switzerland is a chocolate country. Names such as Suchard, Lindt, Cailler, Villars, Camille Bloch are known worldwide and I live at the source. Of course I am spoilt, but strangely I have discovered better.

Each town, perhaps most villages, have their own confetionary shop and my local town of Solothurn is not different. I do not want to start a free advertising campaign for our local chocolate shop, but here is a link: Suteria. It is even in English, clever guy, so now you can see what you are missing and what I can buy. Of course, it is not cheap, but who cares. It is genuine, no imitations in his chocolates or cakes, all the real thing and he even has a restaurant integrated in the whole business.

If I have time I like to bake a cake, muffins, or make deserts, but I have to be in the mood. As far as the salty snacks are concerned, they are another weakness I have, but I have done a cold turkey and no longer indulge. My waist line was expanding, and they are a carbohydrate bomb if there ever was one. I have now limited my consumption of potato chips to eating them accompanying a baked chicken (which I also do myself). I am not one for eating in restaurants or buying fast food, I like to know what is in the food I am eating. I refuse to be poisoned by a chicken nugget or a KFC (we do not even have one in our local area). If I am on holiday or in another town for the day, I might indulge in a MacDonalds hamburger, and just try not to think about what might be in it. One tip: never have pickled cucumber in your hamburger, especially in Summer. They are not only considered a delicacy by humans, but by the flying insect population.

So on this unpalatable remark, I will now continue eating my afternoon Bifidus yoghurt. It is supposed to be healthy.



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2 comments:

  1. I could write an essay, maybe even a book, on the sweet desserts and salty snacks I like!!! I'd better refrain!! You did bring back memories with tales of original East-End bread pudding. I had very much the same in Birmingham. My grandmother's bread-pudding was something else!! Do you also remember 'lardy-cake' ? Another of my childhood favourites that probably wouldn't be well-received beyond the shores of Britain.

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  2. I have a feeling that lardy cake is something more Brummie. Sounds like a calory bomb. On Sunday evening I had a slice of bread and dripping, bread spread with the fat from the Sunday roast, now that was a cholesterol attack on the body, if ever there was one.

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