Ginger pudding

Childhood memories...the stuff of life.

My grandmother died in 1994, the year I turned 24. For the few years before that, she lived in a frail care facility. When we had to clear out her room, we discovered that some of her belongings had been taken. The theft didn't bother me as much but what hurt was the loss of her most prized recipe book.

It started life out as one of those put-together recipe books you find for sale at a church fund raiser, with all the bestloved home cooking and baking recipes that only older ladies in any church community can make, those ones that send you straight back to your grandma's kitchen where you spent your childhood licking out bowls of batter, licking spoons and generally being a pest about whatever was cooking.

She would make a ginger pudding every Christmas that we would eat with steaming hot custard. I remember hiding under the diningroom table one year, stuffing the leftover ginger pudding into my cheeks, much like a hamster stores food in it's cheek pouches. The last time we had that ginger pudding was the year before she went to live in the frail care facility, that must have been around 1991. I have not had it since then.

Over the years I have searched and scoured old recipe books, recipe websites, picked older people's brains and have not been successful. Until 3 weeks ago. I posted a request on http://www.recipezaar.com/, the African forum...I never expected a response. Well, I got one almost immiately and tried it out for the first time today.

Ma, wherever you may be today, I found it.