Major Awards

A little bird told me that last weekend was the judging period for the Wife of the Year and Best Wife Ever awards.  So naturally, being the competitive beast that I am, I had to step up my (already superb) game.  I had to make Andy's wildest dreams come true.

Not in the way that you're thinking, perverts.

The wild dreams to which I refer are decidedly food-oriented.  Carb-oriented, even.  Andy and carbs are good friends - pretzels, pasta, pizza crust, pie crust, pancakes.  Maybe it's just carbs that begin with P?  Case in point:  bread Pudding.

Andy is always on the hunt for bread pudding on a restaurant dessert menu.  It is second in his heart only to creme brulee, I think.  And I am third.  I hope.  I at least want to be aware of my competitors, (but, truthfully, I long to be first).

Mark Bittman's recipe for Breakfast Bread Pudding fell into my lap while I was paging through my copy of Food Matters during my weekly Saturday meal planning brainstorming sesh.  It seemed like a perfect, reasonably healthy way for Andy to carbo-load before his Sunday morning ultramarathon training run up a mountain.  Humblebrag?  Maybe just regular brag.

I tweaked the recipe a bit, so here is my version:

Some kind of fatty fat for greasing the pan (I used good old disgusting Crisco, but the original recipe suggests butter or grapeseed oil)
3 eggs (Mark's version called for 2 eggs and only 1 cup of milk, but after stirring in the bread, it seemed too dry so I whisked up an extra egg and more milk)
1 1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup maple syrup, or to taste (Mark's recipe calls for honey, but mine was a rock-solid mass when I pulled it out of the cabinet, so I used maple syrup, and dialed it back a few notches because that ish doesn't grow on trees.  Except it does, but it's expensive and we aren't Rockefellers up in here)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch salt
8-12 fat juicy strawberries (I need to work on my reading comprehension skills before making a grocery list based on a new recipe, because I had no idea this actually required 4 apples until I started prepping it on Saturday night.  Luckily, a pound of strawberries whispered sweet nothings as I passed them in the produce section, so I decided to make do with them.  I sliced up an amount of strawberries that seemed roughly equivalent in volume to 4 apples ~10 large-ish strawberries)
1/2 cup raisins (optional, but you'll be sorry if you leave them out - if you use apples instead of strawberries, dried cranberries would be excellent here)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional, but they provide a little added texture and some extra nutrients)
8 slices whole wheat or whole grain bread, cut in 1-inch cubes 

I prepared the pudding mixture on Saturday night, refrigerated it in a bowl overnight, and baked it Sunday morning, but you can prepare and bake all in one shot if you're an overachiever.

Beat the eggs in a large bowl, and whisk in milk, maple syrup (or whatever delicious nectar of the bees or trees you happen to be using), cinnamon, and salt.  Stir in your fruit, raisins, and nuts, and then fold in the cubed bread.  If you aren't making this ahead, let the mixture sit for at least 15 minutes to allow the bread to soak up all the eggy cinnamon goodness.  

Preheat the oven to 350°F, and grease an 8-inch square baking dish.  Dump in your bread mixture and use a spatula to even out the surface so you don't end up with a few errant bread cubes going all Icarus on you, flying too high and getting scorched.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, until the center doesn't jiggle more than your own lovehandles when you shake the pan.  A little jiggle is good, though.  I think 45 minutes might have been about 5 minutes too long for me in this soul-sucking, desiccating desert climate.  This pudding was a little dry, even with the addition of the extra egg and milk, so I'll add a bit more milk and reduce the cooking time by a few minutes next time.

Not to be forgotten, the hardest instruction:  wait a few minutes before you cut the pudding.  This waiting step is a little easier to deal with if you're busy staging a photoshoot on the floor by your back door, drawing quizzical looks from man and beast alike.

Do you think I lost points for making a hungry man watch me take pictures of his food before I let him eat it?

Happy carbo-loading/ultramarathon-training/plain-old-breakfasting!