Carrot Pudding

"Come with a woop, or come with a call,
Come with good will or not at all.
You find milk and I'll find the flour,
And we'll have a pudding in half an hour."
-Mother Goose

Many of our children's books feature 'puddings.' Basically, from what we can gather between Mother Goose and fairy tales like "The Three Wishes and the Pudding," a British pudding appears to be just a quick bread, with plums or raisins, baked in a deep, round dish, or boiled/ steamed in a bag.

After an embarrassing amount of reading on traditional British foods, it appears lots of different types of dishes are calles puddings. Some are baked, some are steamed, some are just mixed and chilled (usually fruit-based puddings).

I accidentally made a raw berry pudding last week, but it's not ready to be shared yet. I'll have to be able to recreate it first! I also want to make cornish pasties, yorkshire pudding, bread and butter pudding, and Christmas pudding.

I can make French food, Italian food, Polish food, even a few Russian dishes, but British food has never seemed very interesting before. What? Spotted Dick not intersting? Preposterous!

We've been talking about making a pudding for ages. Today is grey and rainy, so we made a pudding. We made three small ones, actually, one of which we will save for tomorrow. Rosie's feast day! (Feast of St. Rose of Lima.)

Of course, our pudding had to be dairy free, which is definitely not very British... all the recipes look to be full of cream and butter, not to mention slathered in creme fraiche. O well, close 'nuff for us to eat with our Mother Goose.

Here she is, a BreadwithHoney original:

Carrot-Banana Pudding (Bread)
Preheat oven to 315.
4c peeled, chunked carrots (or be lazy and use a 1 lb bag of baby carrots)

3 lg or 4 sm bananas
4 eggs
1c oil
2t vanilla

Blend the above well in the blender.
Sift into a large bowl:
3c whole wheat flour
1t baking soda
1t baking powder
1t salt
3t cinnamon
1/4 c maple sugar/ agave/ etc. (optional)
1c walnuts
1c raisins

Then add the wet ingredients and blend just till moist through.
Pour into greased dishes- 2 loaf pans, 3 bowls, etc.
Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes or till a toothpick comes out clean.

Slather with butter (lucky you), jam, or Earth Balance (I know it's not really a whole food, but c'mon, even I have my little vices.

"Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie."
-Jim Davis

"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you
have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?"
-Pink Floyd, 'Another Brick in the Wall'

Hey, Pink, we had our pudding for lunch- we didn't eat even a bite of meat first!