Bad Pudding
By Leah Braunstein • Illustrated by Paula Becker
It was big. It was bad. But it was no wolf (although it was hairy).
No, what I was dealing with was...
Dessert.
My aunt had presented me with a bowl of something lumpy and gelatinous, the exact color of a nasty bruise I once got playing field hockey.
"Pudding!" she'd sang.
Then she had departed to her kitchen in search of caramel sauce, leaving me alone with her culinary creation. I could hear her voice floating out of the kitchen, murmuring, "Coffee? No. Chicken soup? No. Soy sauce? No...."
I'm going to have to eat this, I thought. How do I get myself into situations like this?
That's an easy answer. You see, I like to travel to the city to visit Aunt Sylvie.
Aunt Sylvie is my father's youngest sister. She lives by herself in a tiny apartment in the most exciting city in the world. She's the kind of person who wears offbeat clothes, like feather boas and boots with mirrors on them. She collects tiaras and old subway tokens.
When I visit, we don't just do stuff—we have adventures. I get to see all the museums, movies, and restaurants that ordinary tourists don't even know are there. Visiting Aunt Sylvie is awesome in every way.
There's just one problem.
She can't cook.
She tries hard. Really hard. She always says she follows recipes exactly. But I don't think she's able to follow anything exactly, because what she ends up with never resembles what it's supposed to be.
Maybe it would help if she would, just once, think small. If she tried to make something foolproof, like grilled-cheese sandwiches or hot dogs. But she never does. She always makes things with about a thousand ingredients, and they always need to be poached or sautéed or blanched. And she's always saying things like "An immersion blender? In this tiny kitchen? I'll just use this fork...." or "Allspice? I'll just use pepper."
Well, you get the idea. She emerges from the kitchen, sweaty and triumphant, with these...things. And I have to eat them.
So there I sat, alone with Aunt Sylvie's pudding, when suddenly it growled, "Whatta you looking at?"
This was a first. But I'm polite enough to speak when I'm being spoken to.
"I'm sorry to stare—I guess you're not what I was expecting," I explained.
The pudding, despite having no forehead, managed to frown. "Whatta you mean?"
I paused, then tried to answer kindly. "Aren't you a little bit unusual for a dessert? The lumps? The hair? The ability to speak?"
Apparently, I said the wrong thing. The pudding drew itself up to its full height and snarled, "Maybe in the two-bit town you come from, but here in the big city, people of taste appreciate something exotic in a pudding."
The pudding drew itself up to its full height and snarled.
The pudding turned its back on me (though it was hard to tell because it didn't have a "back"). Slowly it extended some sort of tentacle into Aunt Sylvie's dinner plate and withdrew two celery sticks she had been using as garnish. It heaved itself out of its bowl and plopped itself atop the celery. Then, much to my astonishment, it...walked...to the edge of the table.
"I'm going where people are a little more sophisticated!" the pudding announced. "I don't need to stay here and be insulted!"
Then it jumped heavily to the floor. Using the celery sticks as makeshift legs, it hobbled to the front door. As it slithered through the crack under the door, I heard it mutter, "Tourists!"
Just then, Aunt Sylvie returned from the kitchen, waving her bottle of caramel sauce. "Found it! Now we can eat...." Her voice trailed off as she looked at the empty bowl. "What happened?"
I thought for a moment about how best to explain, then gave up. "The pudding, um, suddenly...remembered that it had an urgent appointment."
Aunt Sylvie and I walked to the window, and we watched as the pudding, wobbling through the crowds on its celery legs, headed down the sidewalk toward the subway entrance.
"What do you say we go for ice cream?" Aunt Sylvie asked me.
"Sounds great," I replied.
And we followed the pudding out the door.
