Pudding

I must be hungry.  I have been thinking about food.  Specifically I have been thinking about the saying “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”  I think I have gone down this track because the 1st prize in a show I was watching was a pudding.  It was a giant pudding.  People emerged from it.  One from the top and another from the side.   It looked like a pudding, but was a giant cardboard cut-out painted to look like a pudding.  It is sad I know, but I can see two elements to puddings.  Pudding and eating.
I think I have bitter experience of that.  As kids we were being like outback people.  Swinging the tea in the billy in circles and having the centrifugal force hold the contents in, worked a treat.  It was the damper that was the problem.
Roughing it in the outback (which was out back of my place) meant we needed to cook bread.  I must have been disappointed with the result, as it was so long ago, and I still remember it.
We cooked up the bread and were salivating in anticipation of eating.  We both took one bite and knew that was not fit to eat.  Not to worry, we swung into plan b (there had not been a plan b till that point, but we came up with one).  We will give it to the dog.
I will never forget the dog’s reaction.  Seeing a dog take a bite and spit something out is different.  It is not like he was sick, it was just he was keen to eject the substance by the quickest means possible.  The proof of the pudding was in the eating and we failed dismally.  What we prepared was not fit for human or animal consumption.
I don’t do much cooking really.  Apart from poached eggs – I do a mean poached egg.  I am normally the recipient not the propagator.  I have been the recipient numerous times.  More fingers and toes than I have anyway.  One thing I have noticed about the preparation of puddings is they have specific ingredients.  I have never seen someone prepare a bread and butter pudding and produce a battleship. Or someone have lemon, sugar, butter, eggs and flower for a lemon delicious pudding only to produce a tea pot.  Just as well really, as tea pots are hard to digest.
The thing is, everything can be right.  All the ingredients are there and mixed.  What is made is a Lemon Delicious.  Looking at it, anyone in the know would say “that is a Lemon Delicious pudding.”  The thing is, everything can look right but not be right.  Our damper looked right but not even the dog would eat it.
Looks can be deceptive.  Sometimes all is not as it seems.  The proof of the pudding is in the eating.  It is not until I eat something that I know if it is the bees knees. ​