Did you hear the piece on NPR right before Christmas about figgy pudding? It sounded so good that we decided to try it. Basically you take bread, figs, lots of spices and gallons of rum and brandy and boil it on the stove for an hour. Yes, you boil it. Yes, it was a nightmare. Imagine a bundt pan full of cake batter sitting in a pan of water that's boiling and you're trying to keep it at the perfect temperature so the water doesn't boil over into the pan (which it does anyway). But we did it! Here it is before we unmolded it. It came out pretty easily, then we doused it in more brandy and set it aflame. Huzzah! And believe it or not, it was pretty good. It tasted like a really moist gingerbread. The only thing I questioned was, well, the figs. They have such a strange texture and frankly, I've never been able to eat a Fig Newton without thinking about what some little brat told me in grammar school: "Those are actually fly heads." Nice, huh? But it was pretty cool to actually make something that you hear about every Christmas but have no idea what it actually is. Now we know.(P.S. Many years ago we went to a friend's wedding out in California. There were giant fruit plates on the tables, including figs which I had never seen. "What are those?" I asked. The guy next to me, whom the bride described as "the world's most bitter gay man," said, "They're figs. If you don't live in California, you won't like them." Always up for a challenge, I decided to try one, and yes, it was good, despite the fly-head thing. "I think they're good!" I said. "Oh, you'll never eat one again," said Louis, the king of bitterness. Well, HA! There you go, Louis! I did SO eat them again!)
