Guilty Pleasure — Concoctions and Prococtions

The bread proof is in the bread pudding?

Photo by author. Nothing to do with the article, I just like rock and moss and lichen and stuff. But I don’t feel guilty about it!

So Dennett put out a prompt for writing about guilty pleasures.

Guilty Pleasures

Hers is Hallmark Christmas movies, a weakness she shares with my wife, Deb (and the spouses of Mark Starlin and Harper Thorpe — pattern?).

Interestingly, a blog by Nicole Dieker came out on Nicole’s own site shortly after:

How to Make a Holiday

…which is JUST like a Hallmark movie. Take it from an expert.

DEB: This is terrific!! And, yes, it is absolutely Hallmark Movie Channel worthy ❣️👍

(Seriously, it’s a very cute story, you should read it.)

So I mentioned to Dennett that my favorite guilty pleasure is bread pudding, which is one of my cooking concoctions, as Deb likes to call them.

Guilty pleasure? Bread pudding.

As a dessert? Very bad for me, if served at a restaurant with full sugar compliment; still not great if made at home with sugar substitute, because white bread = simple-carb poison for a diabetic. (Although I did try making bread pudding with pumpkin bread and pumpkin filling mixed into the custard — pumpkin pumpkin-bread bread pudding! Still had to take extra oral medications to get my sugars under control. 🙄)

Years ago Deb introduced me to the concept of savory bread pudding — no sugar, herb seasoning, chicken or some other meat/fish added. Leftover bread, of course (in the true spirit of bread pudding) and whatever else happened to be around.

And as fate would have it, I have a mess of savory bread pudding almost ready to pop into the oven. Big mess of leftover stuffing from Thanksgiving (too overdone to send home with the guests), plus leftover mashed potatoes, plus (yes, I’m trying to clean out the fridge) leftover broccoli casserole (with Ritz cracker crumb topping still intact). Plus canned chicken, plus the obligatory cream+egg mixture, plus cheese on top and mixed in. Probably take an hour to bake, so it’ll be going into the oven shortly. And that will be supper for the next four nights!

Dennett was appalled.

Oh, lordy, I have no idea what that mixture is and don’t want to know. What is an “obligatory cream+egg mixture”? Obligatory in Pennsylvania?¹ I have no idea what that even means!!

And, why would you put Ritz crackers on anything, much less broccoli? And, why is broccoli a casserole? It’s perfectly fine as a stand-alone vegetable. As someone who is allergic to broccoli and who loves broccoli, I am appalled that you would taint it with crackers the same color as Trump! Or, any crackers for that matter.

So for those of you who do not know what bread pudding is (or broccoli casserole with Ritz crackers, but I can only do so much in one post), let me explain how it all works in the Herlocker household.

(By the way, there is no actual research, stated or implied, in any of this—if a REAL cook, such as The Solitary Cook, says something different, believe them.) (Probably.)

Bread Pudding (sweet or savory)

Basic bread pudding:

• Stale bread, torn into pieces³
• Eggs
• Rich milk stuff (whole milk, ½&½, cream, heavy cream, whipping cream—go as high up the scale as your tolerance for rich food will allow you)

Mix equal amounts of eggs and milk stuff (isn’t that just custard? yep, basically); add sugar or sweetener for dessert, herbs or spices for a main dish. Dump in the bread. Let it sit long enough for the liquid to soak into the bread. Dump into a buttered baking pan. Bake at 350° for as long as it takes for an inserted knife to come out clean. Let stand for a few minutes. Serve & eat.

That’s bread pudding. All else is commentary; go and study⁴ it.

However…

Okay, stuff I’ve done to build on the above (which is to a real bread pudding recipe what “some iceberg lettuce, a little oil and vinegar, mix ’em up” is to a salad recipe):

Dessert bread pudding

In the past I have added:

• Canned pie filling (apple, cherry, pumpkin, whatever);
• Chocolate chips (mixed in and as topping);
• Sweet bread, like pumpkin bread or nut bread;
• Cream cheese (chunks or blended);
• Chopped fruit;
• Dried fruit (Deb loves raisins and craisins);
• Sauce on top before serving (caramel, chocolate, whatever).

How do you know how much to add and what goes together? Use a real recipe the first few times, then strike out on your own.

Savory bread pudding (side or main)

Mix in:

• Cooked chicken (canned is great in a quick recipe, and remember to drain the “water”—basically chicken broth—onto the bread so it can soak it up);
• Cooked ground beef;
• Cooked ham;
• Cooked bacon (pour some of the grease onto the bread);
• Fresh chopped veggies;
• Thawed frozen veggies;
• Leftover veggies;
• Leftover anything, pretty much — stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey, hamburger, french fries, broccoli casserole⁵, whatever;
• Cheese, preferably something to compliment the other flavors, mixed in or on top or both;
• Herbs and spices to taste. Hard to go wrong with garlic and basil, for example. Or mustard, say, to complement ham, but really, try something you like, it’s hard to go wrong.
• Cooked bacon. (Did I mention that before? Well, it’s bacon, go wild!)

¹Wait, we have some Pennsylvania people around here! Roz, where’s Roz? Hey Roz, do you have bread pudding and broccoli casserole at your end of the Commonwealth? Or do youse² just do cheese steak sandwiches?

²Roz lives near Philly; if she was west near Pittsburgh, this would be “youns” for second-person plural. It’s a PA thing. Not even in the top five popular perplexing peculiarities of Pennsylvania.

³Deb used to bring home a bag of fresh-baked sandwich rolls, left over after an executive boardroom luncheon at the university; since they were fresh and baked on campus for immediate consumption, they went stale while we were looking at them. Perfect! Tear them into chunks, leave them on the kitchen counter for a day or three, use them for the bread pudding.

⁴Meaning, Google for real bread pudding recipes.

⁵Frozen broccoli, Cheez Whiz™ or Velveeta™, cracker crumbs (usually Ritz™) on top. No seasoning except salt (considered a seasoning in southern Lancaster County, PA, along with sugar) and maybe a tiny pinch of pepper. A traditional holiday dish from Deb’s side of the family. (Dennett, not to worry, if you and Captain Argentina visit here we’re taking you to a real restaurant with real food. Probably a vegetarian steak house, if we can find one.)