COMIN' THROUGH THE RYE...

You may well ask: what is that mess pictured below? It is a mess intended to be bread and butter pudding....RYE bread & butter pud with real rye bread, black and solid and made by hand in a small real bakery around the corner. A heavy rye loaf that weighs as much as a brick and if you had a shed-load of those rye bricks you could build a shed that would keep you warm through a nuclear winter and hot through a nuclear summer and if you got hungry you could chisel off a few slices and the walls would remain as thick as thieves trapped in an English lift or an American elevator

I didn't want to waste the left-over half loaf of this indigestible rye bread so I googled recipes and landed on one that seemed plausible though vague about quantities. What, for example, is 3550 of whole milk? So I vaguely followed instructions, reduced the milk, increased the alcohol (vodka-soaked raisins, splashes of vodka, splashes of sherry), added condensed milk, maple syrup, demerara sugar, more raisins, and 4 beaten eggs. Four eggs! I've never added four eggs to anything! Shoved the whole thing in the oven for an hour and this is what came out.

What does it taste like? Like sweet solid soggy rye soaked in alcohol. It's not entirely bad but not actually good. Ice cream on top helps. I can't give it to cats or dogs or birds for fear of turning them into alcoholics.