3/14/2006 04:02:00 PM|||Jodie Chase|||

It puts me in a bad mood when recipes don't turn out, especially when
the reason I'm making them is to make other people happy. When I'm
cooking for myself, I'm OK when a recipe bombs. I can do without the
extra calories. Besides, it keeps me from overeating. That said, I need
to vent. My daughter, who was assigned to bring snacks for a meeting,
decided she wanted to throw a ``pudding extravaganza.'' Now that sounds
like fun!

As she searched the cupboards for boxes of instant pudding, I just had
to get involved. ``Let's WOW them with real pudding,'' I thought to
myself. She had chocolate and vanilla in hand, so I flipped open a
cookbook and found a recipe for butterscotch pudding. Slam-dunk, I
predicted. Give these kids a taste of the real thing. That's what they
need.

Never mind my daughter's cautionary comments: ``Mom, we don't cook
pudding. My generation, we get it from a box. We like it that way.'' I
forge ahead, measuring butter and sugar into the pan. What they don't
know, I reason, is simply what they don't know. I complete the pudding
in minutes and send her on her way with confidence, feeling great about
the opportunity to share some real pudding with these young people.

Two hours later, my daughter returns. They loved the boxed pudding, but the
homemade butterscotch pudding that looked and tasted so luscious right
out of the pan turned grainy and weird. It was bad. They did not like
it. I did not like it. It made me mad. In the morning, I fixed that
pudding. I beat it into submission. But I will never forget how it
betrayed me. It will get a big, fat X next to the recipe, with the words
"Not Good" written in ink. And I suppose I will toss some boxes of instant
pudding into my grocery cart on my next trip to the store.
-- Jolene Thym

|||114238111387608429|||Pudding Madness