DREGS and PUDDING

Grandma’s Christmas Pudding

(Dec 24/05)
My grandmother made the most extraordinary Christmas pudding. Transforming a Chock Full O Nuts coffee tin crimped with tinfoil and an elastic band into a wondrous Yuletide dessert. She steam cooked it over medium heat in a double broiler the night before, then left it to cool on a cookie sheet on the back porch overnight. She peeled the rinds and zest from lemons with a paring knife, and whisked them together with butter, cream and brandy. The lemon sauce was poured over a generous helping of pudding, then parchment-thin slivers of lemon zest were shaved overtop for that added touch.

Before I got sober I remember very little, this, however, I most certainly do. After Christmas dinner, when the plates and serving dished were being cleared from the table, I would sidle out from behind my father’s chair and sneak into the cellar and scrounge around for liquor, those odds and ends that one never seems to put an end or odd to. Having sucked and suckled what I could of the dregs, I would carefully place the now empty bottles back in the liquor cabinet, mount the stairs back up to the first floor of the house, vomit in the dishwasher, and go out back for a cigarette. The split tomato red redness of my face, cheeks profuse and pergola with veins and scabbing, only adding to the festive charm of another family Yuletide.