"Stir Up, We Beseech Thee, O Lord, ....

.... the wills of thy faithful people."  This is the collect from the Book Of Common Prayer that would have been recited in Anglican churches today if they had been open. It is the last Sunday before Advent and is known as Stir Up Sunday. It was traditionally the day when people made their Christmas puddings. 

I use Josceline Dimbleby's recipe from the 70s. It has no sugar, treacle or syrup and has breadcrumbs instead of flour. It doesn't need maturing so I don't usually make mine this early. I made one each for my son and daughter and one for us and got them simmering slowly while Ollie dog and I went walking this afternoon. The sunshine was lovely by the Stort Navigation. There's a nice crop of haws in my image. Hope the redwings and fieldfares from Scandinavia find them.

When we returned I opened the kitchen door to, "A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding." I've made my daughter one like Mrs Cratchit's "speckled cannon-ball".