I have hit THAT age. The age where most of my stories start with "When I was a kid . . . "
So anyway, when I was a kid, my mom and I lived in a small house in Lancaster, California. We lived in a neighborhood that often had abandoned shopping carts parked into curbs. Old houses and dead lawns. A guy with no tongue who lived on the corner hoarding Franklin Mint Collectors Plates, roses body odor and cats. Two teenage girls lived across the street, with their single mom, and naturally those teenage girls were my babysitters. Tanya first, as she was the eldest, and she babysat me up until the guy (whose name was, naturally: Wayne) from the even deeper, scarier, parts of our little ghetto, with his blonde mullet, early 80's shieshter mustache, 4x4 Bronco, and lack of shirts with sleeves -- came and stole her away. Off Tanya went to a glamourless life of white trash, Pabst Blue Ribbon, tube tops and unicorns on velcro-purses, existence. And of course by "stole away" I mean <whispers>: "knockedherup".
Then Andy (the younger sister) took over and she was way more mean to me than Tanya. Which I guess probably means it's best Tanya was the one that got knocked up, because Andy would have been a total shit of a mother back then. So, after a few months of living under the teenage torture of Andrea, I really started to hate the sound of that Wayne's knock-her-up-Bronco-engine, because it meant I'd be stuck with Andrea and not Tanya. But Andrea and I worked-out our little relationship eventually. And by worked-out, I mean I figured out how to make her life as equally hellish as she made mine. So I did shit like pull the phone cord out of the wall when she was talking to one of her boyfriends and totally not babysitting me. Locked her out of my house then pointed and laughed at her through the kitchen window, which was hilarious in the middle of summer when it was like 115F. Told her best friend "Chantelle" that Andy had gossiped about her having an abortion (this was like 1981, and trust me, abortions were a BIG DEAL then -- like never allowed out of the house or invited to anyone's sleep-overs-ever-again: BIG DEAL. I don't think we saw Chantelle for 6 months or sumpin') and that she told other girls she liked to sniff her own butt. Yaknows, just keeping us on an even-keel, in a give-and-take relationship. And by give-and-take I mean I threatened to tell her momma she had her older, drop-out boyfriend in the house while mom was at work and that I had seen her n-a-k-e-d when he was there, so she better not eat the last double-stuff cookie, or drink the last of MY Dr. Skipper. How did I know she was n-a-k-e-d? Because her boyfriend locked her outside of her own house: n-a-k-e-d. Which was even more hilarious than her being locked out dressed when it was 115F! I liked that guy. Clearly he liked me, too. After all he got some pretty good "torture Andy" ideas from me. He also let me sit in the back seat of his Pinto and listen to Journey if I wasn't a blabby, annoying, little asshat. Yeah, Eric-the-drop-out and I got along fine. And sometimes Andy and I got along. Like that time we were sitting on her mom's old broke down Datsun's hood, listening to the radio, and they announced John Lennon had died. And we cried when they played "Woman" right after. But we didn't hug, because, well let's not be ridiculous. Or when she taught me and my BFF Pam how to feather our hair. Or that time she told all the nieghborhood kids I was way smarter than them because I got bumped up to fourth grade classes when I was in 3rd grade ala: "KC is way smarter than you. ALL OF YOU." Which was like an epic moment in our relationship because she had perfected the seething tone in which to call me a "butt head", and had mastered pigtail-pulling to an Olympic event. So hearing her actually compliment me, for anything, was like an "OH MY GOD I JUST BEAT PAC-MAN AND SOLVED RUBIK'S CUBE AT THE EXACT SAME TIME" moment in my childhood. I suppose I also have to thank her for my entire future, because it was Andy that told me how gross and shocking punk rockers were, like eating salads straight out of the sink (Inorite? WTF?) and wearing safety pins in their ears and I was all like thinking "Yessssss that's exactly what I want to be. Someone that can shock and bother Andy" and ta-da: Mission Accomplished! I'm sure the punk rock world thanks you, Andrea.
But what the hell does any of this have to do with plum pudding?
I'll tell ya.
Tanya and Andy's mom had a nice built in bookshelf along the wall of the entry way of her house. On that bookshelf stood a candle, in a glass jar, with a lid. A PLUM PUDDING scented candle.
I was freaking OBSESSED with that candle. In that way kids become obsessed with things they can't have but they can't leave alone, either. I didn't go over there very often (why would I? Their mom worked all the time, and she had raised her girls, she didn't want no little kid over there, always sniffing her plum pudding candle) but when I did, it was me and that candle: a plum pudding scented LOVE AFFAIR. I would stand in that dark entry way, quietly lift the lid and just sniffffffffffffffffff that candle like I couldn't get enough of the scent. It transported me to places where I was a princess and might get to eat something that tasted SO HEAVENLY, like the smell of that candle. THAT CANDLE. That gorgeous, had never been lit, piece of heaven, just sitting there day in, day out, waiting for me to come over and appreciate it and sniff it like nobody else did. . .
So today when I found myself the proud owner of ten pounds of plums all at once -- what came to my mind? YOU KNOW IT:
PLUM PUDDING.
So imagine my shock and dismay when I went looking for plum pudding recipes and none of them contained PLUMS. Wait WUTTTTT?
According to the folks at whatscookingamerica.net, here is WHY plum pudding contains no plums:
Plum pudding is a steamed or boiled pudding
frequently served at holiday times. Plum pudding has never contained plums. The name
Christmas pudding is first recorded in 1858 in a novel by Anthony Trollope.
Why is Plum Pudding called
Plum Pudding when there are no plums in it? In the 17th century, plums referred to raisins
or other fruits. Plumb is another spelling of plum. Prune is actually derived from the same word as plum - the Latin
word was pruna, which changed in the Germanic languages into pluma. But the terms were
quite confused in the 16th and 17th centuries and people talked about growing prunes in
their garden.
(1) Defination of "plum" in the Oxford English Dictionary
A dried grape or raisin as used for puddings, cakes, etc. This use probably arose from the substitution of raisins for dried plums or prunes as an ingredient in plum-broth, porridge, etc., with retention of the name 'plum' for the substituted article. The OED then goes on to list occurrences of this use in literature. Samuel Johnson defined a "plum" as "raisin; grape dried in the sun."(2) Some information from A Gourmet´s Guide by John Ayto
"Dried plums, or prunes, were popular in pies in medieval times, but gradually in the sixteenth and seventeenth century they began to be replaced by raisins. The dishes made with them, however, retained the term plum, and to this day the plum pudding, plum cake, plum duff etc. remind us of their former ingredients." And yes, the raisins were sometimes called plums in the 19th century, but only when they were in a plum pudding or plum cake ...(3) Quote from The Gourmets Guide "Nowadays served only at Christmas, and so called exclusively Christmas pudding, this was formerly a common year-round pudding (albeit not always as rich as the festive version); indeed, in 1748 Pehr Kalm, a Swedish visitor to England, noted that "the art of cooking as practised by Englishmen does not extend much beyond roast beef and plum pudding". And in 1814, one of the traditional English delicacies introduced to the French by Antoine Beauvilliers in his L´art du cuisiner was plomb-poutingue."
Oh of COURSE it'll be just like the British to go and name something "plum pudding" when it contains no plums. What else do you expect from the country that has thrust "One Direction" onto us?
Also does not contain plums. Does contain a ton of shite, though.
So what does this mean for me and my chasing down the scent of my childhood obsession? It means SCREW YOU ENGLAND, I am going to take those plums, soak them in wine and vanilla, sprinkle them in brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg, and then I am going to dehydrate them and make my whole house smell like that candle from my childhood. And we're going to have plum-pudding candy actually made from plums and there is NOTHING you can do about it! So HA!
Whatever happened to that candle you might be asking? Well if you're not, you're going to find out anyway. And I SWEAR on Gus Thresh's souless-ginger-soul I am not making this up . . .
Years later, when I was a still a teenager, I went to Andy and Tanya's moms house because Andy had married Eric, and they were having a little homey wedding reception. Journey was playing. The PLUM PUDDING CANDLE was finally lit . . . for the first time. Ever. Because I told Andy's mom this story and about my weird sniffing obsession with her candle. She looked at me a little funny (I totally understood, and I was already totally used to that, by the way), but she lit it. Because she kinda remembered the weird neighbor kid standing in her entry way all quiet and creepy, sniffing her candle. Yes, I also told her about Andy being locked outside n-a-k-e-d, so she slapped Andy . . . which was of epic hilarity to me. . . then, what happened next, of all things, Chantelle, (of abortion-and-butt-sniffing-fame) was standing there in front of those built-in bookshelves, talking to Andy's mom, when POOF -- her hair went up in flames. She always did like hairspray. Just sayin'. Thankfully though, they got the hair-fire out before she lost most of it, and thankfully she wasn't burned. But some of her burned hair drifted down into the gorgeous plum-pudding scented candle, and ruined it. Forevers like.
And my little goth heart broke into a million pieces of teh sads that night.
And so that's that. Wish me luck. I really need this scent to happen. And if it does? I MAY forgive Gus Thresh and the rest of England.
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