Making Pain-Au-Chocolat Pudding

So Kendra hosted a holiday party, and, after spending the day being more than a little pathetic, I decided to pull myself together and make a dessert to take along with. I was generally uninspired, but as I leafed through How to Be a Domestic Goddess my eyes fell on the photo of the Pain-Au-Chocolat Pudding. Delicious! I rushed out to the store and purchased their last three pain-au-chocolats and got to work. It turns out the recipe is surpisingly easy: cut up pain-au-chocolat and arrange in pan. Heat milk and cream. Before it boils add in egg and egg yolks and sugar, add vanilla, pour over pain-au-chocolat. Allow pain-au-chocolat to soak up custard, then bake. And it was delicious, if a little rich. I’m definitely glad I didn’t eat the whole thing myself. In case you’re in any doubt, the recipe is most certainly not low cholesterol; another reason it’s good I shared it with people (a sign of old age is that not that you have had your cholesterol tested, it’s that you’ve had it tested and discovered it’s astronomically high).

Listening to Rosa Passos

I learned of Rosa Passos in the New Yorker, and was delighted when my friend, Chris, lent me a couple of her CDs (Rosa and Entre Amigos). Her music has a lovely ethereal sound to it, and I’ve been using it as music to wake up to. It’s a lovely way to ease yourself into the day – much better than the news on the radio or a beeping alarm clock, but probably less immediately effective.

Reading Exiting Nirvana

I’ve been reading Exiting Nirvana: A Daughter’s Life with Autism. It’s a mother’s account of her autistic daughter’s emergence from autistic isolation into a more socially engaged existence. It turns out it’s a sequel (I haven’t read the first book): it follows an account of her daughter’s first 8 years, chronicled in a book called The Siege. In any case, I’ll definitely look out for The Siege as Exiting Nirvana is excellent. It’s written with such compassion, understanding, and intelligence, with insight into her daughter’s autism, and the struggle that it has been for everyone involved to help Jessy (her daughter) lead a more interactive life: learning to communicate and interact, and to reduce the distress she experiences in her interaction with people and the world.