I Must be Feeling Better

How do I know?

Because when I see recipes that look scrumptious, they actually look scrumptious again.

For quite some time now, while I've had not any appetite, when I saw recipes in magazines I was quite ho-hum about them.

And that is quite a departure for me.

Usually, I'm all over new, interesting recipes.

Provided they contain ingredients that I will eat (I am supremely fussy).

Yesterday, I went on a quest to find a recipe for Pudding Chomeur -- a favourite dessert from my childhood for which I never knew the name until the other night when my daughter-in-law was over and our discussion turned to French Canadian food fare.

And the description of Pudding Chomeur exactly fit the very simple dessert that I remember having at my French Canadian grandmother's place.  Of course, my mother often made it too, she having learned to cook from her mother-in-law.  I loved it!

My paternal grandmother, c1952

I often wonder if my love affair with all things caramel and/or butterscotch stems from my enjoyment of that dessert.

But I never knew the name of it, and I never knew how to make it.

Over the years, I have attempted many times to replicate that favourite dessert that I remembered from my childhood.

I knew the sauce was brown sugar based, but I just couldn't match the delight of my childhood memory.

I could never get the cake quite right.

And I sure couldn't get the sauce right.

Today, a neighbour is over helping John bring the wood in and they will be coming in for lunch soon.

Their dessert will be my first foray into attempting to make a Pudding Chomeur.

Of the several receipes I found yesterday, I took the one that sounded most like what I remember from my childhood.

If it isn't quite right, I will on another occasion, try one of the other recipes (I found mucho many).

And I will go down the list until I've found the one that most closely matches what I remember being served as a young girl.

It may well turn out to be a combination of a couple of the recipes; the pudding from one with the sauce from the other; or the complete recipe from one with the technique from the other.

We'll see.

In any event, I'll let you know what the verdict is.

And to get back to the subject of this post?

We know I'm feeling better because for the past two weeks, I didn't have the interest in any recipe nor did I have the energy to make a dessert.

The fact that I both went in search of a recipe and then got up this morning and actually made something tells me that I am feeling much better than I have in weeks.

And that, my friends, is a good thing!