Food for Thought, But Nibbles Only

When you're writing flash nonfiction, you don't spend any time on appetizers. My story, "Proof of the Pudding," which appears in this new book, cuts directly to dessert, specifically

Grandma Gertie's famous recipe for apple bread pudding. Enjoy!

Proof of the Pudding

By Terri Elders

My spouse, Ken, spotted the package of banana pudding mix I’d set on the kitchen counter. “No pudding in any guise,” he warned me.

“Oh, I thought I’d mash up these soft bananas and stir them into that mix. You like banana cream pie.”

“Make banana bread instead. I don’t do pudding.”

I added pudding to a list that already included cabbage, sweet potatoes, and deviled eggs. But I regretted Ken’s refusal to taste the down-home dishes Grandma had taught me to cook, the nostalgic nibbles I dearly loved. He even declined fried zucchini.

This was the same man who bragged he’d savored snails in garlic sauce, purchased from a street vendor next to the Eiffel Tower. He’d lamented that he couldn’t find quark, a kind of yogurt cheese he favored when he’d lived in Germany. And Ken never pushed away any kind of fried meat.

A devotee of Miguel de Cervantes, Ken collected Don Quixote paintings and images. He’d complained about his hero’s diet, described in the opening pages of Cervantes’ 17^th century Spanish novel as sparse, monotonous and unpalatable.

“If Quixote and I hung out, I’d insist he try a chicken-fried steak,” Ken said. “That would help fatten him up.”

I disliked having to toss out a dish that didn’t please his palate. Ken knew I hated to throw any food away. My years in the Peace Corps had taught me it’s unethical to waste food.

One spring as we weeded the front yard, I’d held aloft a dandelion, lamenting that I couldn’t remember how Grandma had prepared her “mess o’ greens.”

“She wilted the dandelion leaves in bacon grease, and added onion and garlic,” I began, dreamily recalling the delicious aroma. “I think she added a dash of vinegar. Or maybe it was pepper sauce.”

“It would be a mess, all right,” Ken had retorted, yanking the weeds from my hand and tossing them into the wheelbarrow.

I usually went along, but when it came to bread, I balked. I believed that letting bread grow moldy amounted to blasphemy. Bread, Grandma had taught me, was the staff of life. Every crumb had value. Stale loaves could transform them into croutons to sprinkle on French onion soup, or crumbs to pad out meat loaf, or cubes to stir into stewed tomatoes.

One morning I noticed that some of the apples I’d stored in our pantry when they’d ripened on our trees the past autumn had begun to look dehydrated. I also saw we had half a loaf of more-than-a-day-old French bread.

I thumbed through my recipes and found Grandma’s instructions for apple bread pudding.  Aha! Maybe I’d claim it was Brown Betty. Grandma had made that, too, but it didn’t contain milk and eggs. Ken wouldn’t know the difference. After all, in Don Quixote, Miguel Cervantes had immortalized the adage, (in one translation, anyway) “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Sometimes Grandma served her bread pudding with a sauce, either vanilla or caramel, but since Ken scrunched up his face at syrupy toppings, I’d garnish it with whipped cream, which he loved.

“Ready for dessert, honey?  I baked something this afternoon.”

Ken favored me with his lopsided smile. “What’s it called?”

I scooped out a couple of servings into custard cups. I had difficulty telling even a little white lie without turning crimson, so I averted my face. I squirted whipped cream, cooking up an evasion.

“Oh, it’s something Grandma used to bake. It’s an old-fashioned dish, like a Brown Betty with apples.”

Ken ate every bite. “It’s paradisaical,” he said. “I’ll take seconds. What’s it called again? How do you make it??”

I bit my lip and handed him Grandma’s recipe card.

“Bread pudding?” Ken sputtered. “I thought you said it was Brown Betty.”

“Hmmm. I must have pulled out the wrong recipe. Still want seconds? It’s a pudding. That you don’t do in any guise.”

Ken grinned and handed me his bowl. “Guess I can’t say that anymore.”

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, I’ve heard. Wait…did Miguel de Cervantes say

that? No…I think it was Grandma.

 This is book will be available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Woodhall Press. (Temporary delay in publishing because of pandemic.)