Pudding

I have a thought about pudding, several in point of fact. That banana pudding is a most comforting sort of food. That a pudding-like recipe seems as though it will never thicken, then thickens in all of an instant. That pudding-based ice cream is the best homemade ice cream, most especially if made with fresh, ice-cold goat's milk.

The motor crank is making its laborious racket in the kitchen. Ma is frying chicken and making carrot-and-apple salad. She already made wheat rolls. Everyone is taking turns holding the little one, and I had been crocheting a blanket. BJ is dutifully tending the ice cream maker, adding salt and ice. It's beginning to struggle with its ever-thickening load. That's the thing about pudding - it seems like it'll never be done. Not that the ice cream is pudding, per se, but this is the second time it has to thicken, the first being when I cooked the creamy base. Some, I suppose, refer to such an interminable waiting as "waiting for Christmas to come" - but I think of "waiting for pudding to thicken." You think it'll never happen, and then suddenly, poof! it does! Speaking of which.... it happened, and there's a beater that needs lickin'!