Bread Pudding

This Halloween weekend was a flurry of parties:
Friday - Halloween Eve Party. Guests began arriving around 7:00 p.m. and stayed until 3 a.m. Great costumes! The Samuri and Ninja, Catholic school girl and nun, Marilyn Monroe crossdresser, and pirates were my favorite. Lots of men dressed as women, and one guy in particular really should consider entering a drag queen contest. There were far too many sexy maids, sexy bugs, sexy barmaids, sexy devil costumes, but what else can twenty-somethings be, especially when gravity and metabolism is still on their side? Even the fortysomethings (well, only the ones that had graduated from the killer BootCamp workout program),showed up in short-shorts and ti-yi-yight dresses. Our policeman friend came dressed in purple velvet as a pimp, his wife, came as a prostitute dressed in little more than thigh high white boots. I don't really need to mention that she's a bootcamp graduate, do I? My husband and I were hippies, and no, it was not my era, and no, we are not bootcamp graduates, (but, I am starting back on my lifting tiny weights program that has proved effective in the past).
I will post a few party photos later.

Appetizer - Chicken wings
Place chicken wings on cookie sheet.
Drizzle with honey and barbecue sauce.
Salt and pepper.
Serve hot.

Saturday - DeAnn's Halloween Night Annual Chili Party. We arrived about ten minutes late because I had procrastinated getting ready or starting the chili until the last minute, mainly because I was still seriously tired from the party and couldn't get myself up to the task of cooking, until I had a pressing deadline, (the recurring theme of my life). No one cared one bit, especially our hostess who took us on a tour of her sans ex-husband newly-remodeled house, (the bedroom is decorated around a Parisian and designer shoe theme, and the color scheme is pink and brown). Many more guests showed up much later, and we didn't start chili tasting until close to 6 p.m. My favorite chili was a hot chile verde, and a meat lover's pork and steak chili. She had a white sweet wine left over from her Wine & Chocolate party. I suppose sweet white wine and chili don't mix. Does it really matter? Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies rounded off the evening.

Entree - White Bean Chili
Warm a dollop of butter and splash of oil.
Add as much garlic as you prefer.
Add 2 to 4 cans of stewed tomatoes.
Add 2-4 cans white beans, juices drained.
If you prefer your chili "hot", slice a hot pepper in half, remove seeds, then add halves to the mixture.
Shred rotisserie chicken into small pieces and stir in .
Simmer for twenty minutes.
Serve with Crema de la Casa sour creme and a dash of Tapitia.

Sunday - Mom's 74th Birthday Party. Every time I travel to my sister's home, I have to mentally prepare myself for the preciptious climb up her switchback driveway. I should add that I usually have my parents with me and they're giving me advice, expressing their concern, or are arguing the entire time it takes to drive up the driveway and turn around in front of the garage without going off the side of the mountain. This is just not helpful in the least.

This Sunday, on the drive to my sister's (and her scary driveway),about five minutes away, I had my second case of road rage. The first was eighteen years when I was two months pregnant and a psychotic, hormonal mess, and all I really did was speed up to about eighty-five, pass the guy, and then calmly switch lanes, get in front of him, and slow down, rather dramatically. Lame. This incident, some guy in a huge truck pulling a horse trailer drifted sharply into my lane. Luckily, there was a center lane and no one was in it, so I made a hard left, otherwise it would have been very ugly. I thought the guy would correct himself, but no. He was on his cellphone, and pulled his entire outfit into the lane. I did the mature thing: laid on the horn, flipped him off, (directly under my father's nose), and called the driver a very bad name, which rhymes with trucker. Did I mention my mother was in the back seat? Very, very bad behavior, so yet another black mark on my score sheet. I have to admit that the last time I flipped anyone off, actually flipped a thing off, it was a Hummer, and my daughter was scandalized, so I stopped "flipping off" Hummers of all kinds a couple years back,(there's a very funny website devoted to flipping off Hummers). Anyway, I got myself together, switched to calling the driver an ass hat, apologized to my parents for acting like an ass hat myself, and tried to behave for the remaining four minute drive.

Dessert - Bread Pudding
I used Paula Dean's Krispy Creme bread pudding recipe for the party, and you can follow the link if you'd like to try it. It was just a little too donuty for my tastes, so I've switched it up a little.

1 loaf sourdough bread, cubed.
2 cans chunky cocktail fruit, juices included.
1 can sweetened condensed milk.
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.
2 eggs, beaten.
Dash salt.
1 16 ounce tub Litehouse Caramel Dip.
1 bottle spiced dark rum.
FYI: the recipe for the Rum sauce is included after the following instructions.

Preheat oven to 350.
Remove crust of the sourdough bread and cut into cubes. Set aside.
Mix eggs, condensed milk, salt, cinnammon, a healthy splash of rum, and fruit cocktail together.
Add bread and allow to soak up mixture.
Butter inside of cake pan.
Pour bread mixture into pan.
Drizzle or spoon in caramel.
Cook for 1 hour.
Drizzle with rum sauce.

Rum sauce
1 stick butter.
Confectioners sugar.
Spiced dark rum.

Melt butter and stir in confectioners sugar until it is a smooth consistency. How much rum you use is entirely up to you.