Cold, Cold Day and Comfort Food

I remember cold days in the past, when my Mom would be in the kitchen just about all day. She would prepare a hearty, hot, meal for us.We lived on the outskirts of town...a little development called Sunset Park... after the war. There was no bus service, when we first moved in. Dad had to walk to work...many miles each day. He worked at night and never missed a day of work. Mom was a stay at home Mom...she took care of the house and family while he was gone. Because he had this long walk, in all kinds of weather, Mom always catered to Dad in the meals she would prepare. She felt it was her job to take care of him and that lasted even into their old age. We had...stick to the ribs....meals. We usually ended the meal with some sort of dessert. She loved baking pies and cakes...and they often found their way to our table. Yesterday, I was thinking back to some of the"simple"recipes she made. The first one that came to mind was bread pudding. She was a frugal cook...using everything up. She once said that we could eat for a week... using the food that her sister threw away. She had a container with stale bread that she saved for stuffing, but once in a while she made a bread pudding with it. We favored lemon sauce on our bread pudding...not a hard sauce as some served. It was a favorite of mine and Dad's too. Over the holidays, I bought a nice loaf of raisin bread at Sam's. It was more than I wanted to spend, but I thought that it would be a treat for breakfast. As it turned out...it was a heavy bread and not as nice as I thought it would be. What would I do with the rest of the loaf? Remembering my Mom, I cut it into cubes and put it in a bag in the freezer. I added to this bag pieces of wheat bread and other nice breads from Christmas. I have never made bread pudding. I don't know why...I have had it in restaurants many times. It's just something that I never tried making. I had my Mom's recipe and yesterday decided to give it a try. This recipe took a lot of time...because I made a lemon curd to go on top.Do you see that little bite missing in the top left hand corner :)
Last night, while watching TV, I served my pudding with lemon curd. It was warm and filling. Memories flooded back from my childhood. I didn't realize what work had gone into this "simple" pudding. The preparation of the bread, the scalding of the milk, tempering the eggs, putting the pudding in a water bath....it all took time. Then on top of that making the lemon curd. Mom had made this look so simple. She cooked all her meals from scratch...no boxed or frozen food in those days. We had meals with a meat, potato or noodles, vegetable, bread, and a dessert. Many times we had casseroles and hashes using up all the leftovers. She was a magician in the kitchen.

I never gave her meals a thought in those days, but when I married and tried to do what she did...I did a miserable job at first. Hamburgers and chicken were as creative as I got. After reading countless cookbooks, using Mom's recipe box and my Grandma's, watching countless hours of the food channel, I'm a pretty good cook. My favorite thing to do is create meals and not use a recipe. My specialty is soup. I love to put things together and make a delicious soup out of almost nothing.

We have over a half a pan of bread pudding left. I think we'll have some today and then I'll see if I can freeze a couple of portions for later. I'm looking out the window at the smoke coming out of the neighbor's chimneys. The ground is blanketed with snow. Another cold day. I better get going to make, a stick to our ribs , meal. Neither of us needs that kind of meal today, but it's a comforting thought.

Balisha