Thanksgiving, Exercises, Bowling and Lunch.

Wishing all my American friends a very Happy Thanksgiving and hope you all have a wonderful day.

I am feeling virtuous having just come from my exercise class. We virtually don’t stop moving for 45 minutes (give or take). I do in fact have to sit down occasionally as my hip hurts, but generally they are very easy exercises and designed for older people. These are classes run by Senior Service organisations in Kitchener (government funded I assume) and the same group arranges for things like Meals on Wheels which we don’t need. Or at least not yet, I do hope we never do need them. I have been three times now (4 if you include the time I checked them out and joined in at the end) and I think it is doing me some good. Together with the bowling I only miss out on Tuesdays, OK I could do something at home I know, however, I just discovered one of the class would like to learn T’ai Chi so maybe I can teach her on a Tuesday. That’s me (in the red shirt at the front) doing T’ai Chi or Taijiquan as it’s mostly called  these days, when I was in N.C. The one on the left is my sifu, Rose, who used to tell stories of how some of the people she encountered in N.C. would raise hex signs against her and seemed to think she taught some weird religion or something. Nothing religious about it, philosophical perhaps.

Today we are off on our Travel league to Elmira, Ontario. The forecast says some snow in the evening, I do hope so, I want to go as much for the mincemeat tarts as for the bowling, plus it makes a nice day out as we have lunch first. The Crossroads, where we lunch, has a huge gift store attached with some delightful, but very expensive items. I don’t think I have ever bought anything there, but I love to look at the things they are selling, gorgeous ornaments and nick knacks, or course at this time of the year they have lots of Christmas stuff. I wish I could afford some of their stuff, just as well I can’t I would be broke in no time I think. This picture is only a corner of it.

I thought it was about time we had something with chocolate in it, haven’t done so in a while. So here is an English type pud. As I say, castor sugar is just fine ground and like our regular sugar here. Not sure about golden, probably the addition of some syrup, but I don’t think it will make a difference.

Squidgy Chocolate Pear Pudding

 

Serves 8

This hot, gooey chocolate pud, with dark chocolate and canned pears, can be made ahead and frozen - a perfect no-fuss dinner party dessert

Ingredients

• 200g butter, plus extra for greasing
• 300g golden castor sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 75g plain flour
• 50g cocoa powder
• 410g can pears halves in juice, drained
• 100g plain dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
• 25g flaked almonds (optional)
• cream or ice cream, to serve

Method

1. Heat oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5. Lightly grease a roughly 20 x 30cm shallow ovenproof dish. Put the butter in a large saucepan and place over a low heat until just melted. Remove the butter from the heat and stir in the sugar until well combined.
2. Whisk the eggs together in a large bowl. Gradually add the eggs to the butter and sugar, beating well with a wooden spoon in between each addition. Sift the flour and cocoa powder on top of the egg mixture, then beat hard with a wooden spoon until thoroughly combined.
3. Pour into the prepared tin or dish and nestle the pears into the chocolate batter. Put the chocolate on a board and cut into chunky pieces roughly 1.5cm with a large knife. Scatter the chocolate pieces over the batter and sprinkle with almonds, if you like. Can be frozen at this stage.
4. Bake in the centre of the oven for 30 mins or until the mixture is crusty on the surface and lightly cooked inside. Do not allow to overcook, as the cake will become spongy rather than gooey in the centre. Serve warm with cream or ice cream

To freeze

Wrap the cooled, unbaked pudding tightly in foil, label and freeze for up to 1 month. To serve, unwrap the pudding and bake from frozen as above in step 4 for 50 mins.

Have a great day