"And now for something completely different." Monty Python's Flying Circus

No, I don't intend to do a Pythonesque sketch in this post. I thought I should make that clear from the beginning. I don't want to mislead you.   

But in fact, this post is going to be very different than the last weeks was, and it's frustrating that one has to be so careful these days to give credit where credit is (I guess) due.   

I think it is unfortunate that television shows are allowed to steal perfectly good phrases, such as the one I've used for my title, that the rest of us might need to utter, in conversations, in letters, in technical journals, or in the titles of posts, without worrying that we are infringing on copyrighted material.  

I think it's most unfortunate that just because they decided to use those words on TV one day, the rest of us can no longer say it without looking over our shoulders, and living in fear that the copyright cops, or similar thugs, might be sneaking up, about to slap us with a writ, or injunction or something equally meddlesome.  And which would probably sting besides, if they slapped us with it hard enough, especially, I suppose, if it were wet. Therefore, I've decided to rename my post.  

My new title is:

And now for something completely indifferent.   

I think my title is now more descriptive of my post anyway, since I intend to discuss various versions of a pudding I have been experimenting with lately. I think that even the most tolerant of you will be indifferent to my subject. The rest of you when you read it, might want to slap me with something wet, and that stings.  

But here goes. 

It's feijoa season here.  Our village trees have been producing abundantly, and I've been dropping gold coins, practically every Monday, Thursday and Saturday, into the money box attached to the produce carts in the Atrium, and taking home a bag of them.  

I think feijoas are the perfect fruit with which to make puddings.  They are firm enough not to disintegrate when you boil them and tart enough to stand up to the bland components that I choose to add. I also drizzle in just a little Golden Syrup or honey to all my puddings, simply because I want to.  

This first pudding is one I've made before, feijoa and acorn.  I've written about this combination before as well. The acorn is much better when it's very finely ground, otherwise, even with all the boiling I do, it stays somewhat gritty. This pudding turned out very smooth. 

I'll start with the steps leading up to the final product.  

BTW, that is a NZ pumpkin in the background.  You will not find orange-skinned ones here.  

The flesh is orange.  The rind is extremely hard.  Carving this kind of pumpkin would require a hammer, chisel, and reciprocating saw. Further, the seed cavity is quite small. 

Those are average-sized feijoas.   

The texture of the outer part of the fruit reminds me of a pear.  The inner part is somewhat like a tomato, in that it is soft and seedy, although not as soft as a tomato, and it tastes nothing like a pear or tomato.  You'll notice too that they have a tendency to discolor, much like an apple does when exposed to the air.  I think that is part of the explanation for the color of my finished puddings. They tend to be darker in color than the raw fruit.  

I cut them in half and then scoop out the insides with a teaspoon.  

This is my acorn meal before the final grinding. I have kept it double-wrapped in the freezer for years now and it is still perfect. The trick is to get it extremely dry before freezing. (Acorn meal is 7% protein.)  

The finished pudding. The pieces you see in it are the feijoa parts that have not broken down. 

This pudding was a success.  

This is my second pudding. Instead of acorn meal, I used grits.  I liked this one very much because the taste and texture of the grits came through, sort of, anyway.  And I like grits. 

This next one has oatmeal added.  I buzzed up the oatmeal very fine in Jeanne's Magic Bullet and also added a few raisins to the mix, because I like raisins in oatmeal. This one might be the best one of the bunch(So far, anyway).  It, like the others, is very good cold.  Now, before you ask how could cold oatmeal be good, you need to make some of this and find out.  You could substitute rhubarb.  That's tart too and would work perfectly. Apples would work of course, it's just that they won't be as tart and I think the tartness adds something to the pudding.   

You don't need a recipe.  Get your pan of sauce ready to go and add whatever carbo you want to it and the appropriate amount of water.  Then, simmer away until you think it's done.  Just keep watching it, you might have to add more water.  

This one is made with rice.  I again used the grinder to pulverize the rice and I again added raisins to this batch.  It was still warm when I took this picture and it is getting thicker as it cools.  It took a lot of water, probably at least 3 times the amount you'd use to cook dry rice. 

For my final pudding, I pulled out all the stops.  

This one has a small amount of finely ground barley, and 2 1/2 Weet-Bix biscuits. It has raisins and pumpkin and sunflower seeds. No, it doesn't have chocolate, despite its appearance.  

 

Here it is.  

I have to say that I liked all of them. 

The acorn was my least favorite, texture-wise, but that was because I think that it was an unfamiliar food. I value it the most however, because of what it represents; a huge nutrition storehouse and a long, now mostly lost history of human consumption. 

The grits were comfort food.

The oatmeal the same, and with the raisins, it was even better. 

The rice reminded me of Chinese Congee. I have tried several of them. They are available in little singe serving cans in markets here, and most even provide the diner with a tiny, snap together spoon. My pudding is much thicker than the congees I've tried. They come in lots of different flavors, red bean being the most common, or even plain rice. 

The barley and Weet-Bix was my hands-down favorite. It's just so full of good stuff. I found that the Weet-Bix completely disintegrated and with the cooking, came to give the pudding a really interesting smoothness.  

Finally, I thought I'd show you a feijoa 'shooter.' It's Jeanne's favorite way of eating them.  You get an explosion of juice and flavor this way.  Very pleasant and somewhat addictive, especially if you have someone else peeling them for you. The one on the left is from our village and about an average size. The one on the right I bought from the market. It's the biggest one I've ever seen.         -djf