My Magic Pudding Moment

Do you know The Magic Pudding, that treasure of a children´s book? It´s an Australian classic, and one of my most ever favourite books. It lives on the shelf beside my bed.
That´s where I keep a stash of books I love more than the others. So that if I can´t go to sleep , or wake up in a frazzled state of mind, or have the flu, I just have to reach out to feel jes´ fine.

So anyway, this magic pudding is the sweetest book you´ll ever read, about a set of carachters with names like Bunyip Bluegum, and Watkin Wombat. Don´t you want to read it already? And when you know that it´s about a Magic Pudding that´s a pie, except when it´s something else, like a steak, or a jam donut, or an apple dumpling, or whatever its owner wants it to be? And it never runs out? See, I can tell you´re amazoning the thing like crazy already.

All this is by way of introducing what I like to thing as My Magic Pudding Moment. Last week I received a parcel from Australia, from Neil of Food for thought . We´d done a little transaction you may know about soon, concerning some changes to Neil´s blog, and this was my material reward.

My very own food blogger parcel, and a magic pudding of sorts. For a few days now we´ve been dipping into it and drawing out something wonderful and different each time.

First to fall, spectacularly, torn apart by various overexcited family members, where a chocolate Torcik wafer cake, and Sliwki, chocolate coated prunes (a lot of the stuff is Polish, courtesy of Neil´s wife). Then there were the oh-so-moreish tins of Watrobki Tybne, cod liver in oil (absolutely, one just isn´t enough). There are a bunch on instant soups and sauces that I haven´t tried yet, and some lovely blueberry jam. A packet of Australian spices, and some wattle seed, which I´m finding very fascinating. The bottle of Tokay I haven´t opened yet, even though there were strong suggestions that we all toast Australians in general and all Neil´s family in particular. I´m saving that for a special moment, and for now we´ll stick to the various flavours of tea, also in the parcel.
The beautiful tea towel with Mae Gibbs illustrations has pride of place in the kitchen , and I´ve been studying Bill´s kitchen closely. It´s a great book, and I can tell it´s going to jump straight into the list of favourites.

There´s also Tasmanian honey, which I requested after reading Jenjen´s post , and some Red gum honey, which Neil prefers. I´ve tried both, on toast with butter, two mornings in a row, and can´t make up my mind.

Unlike the Magic Pudding, it will run out, eventually, but still, it´s quite magical, in its way, the whole blog thing.
Thanks so so much, Neil, and I´m really lookign forward to your revamped blog.