A senior moment or two

A new edition of Roger Bryan's book about tricks to improve memory It'll Come in Useful One Day would have saved me from a senior moment yesterday. Well, two, if you count the christmas pudding I found on a shelf, two years past its expiry date. I love christmas pudding, and I ignore use by dates on products such as christmas pudding, so I stuck it in a colander over a large saucepan and began to steam it for the recommended hour and a half. I refilled the water twice and was nearly there but something distracted me. In due course, I began to sense, rather than smell, something amiss in the kitchen, ran in and realised that the water had boiled away some time before. The transparent lid over the pudding and colander was full of steam but there was something dangerous about the ensemble. I let it cool a bit and then decided to pour some boiling water into the top, and stood well back. A violent popping ensued, and it was clear that the new water had immediately vaporised. I poured in some more boiling water and left it to cool down some more. What had happened is that the intense heat had melted the plastic tub that encased the pudding, and welded the bottom to the colander. I had ruined a colander and a saucepan. I tipped out what could be detached of the pudding, wondering if it was irremediably contaminated by melted plastic. There were some slighty suspicious white blobs in the mess, but I was so consumed by appetite for christmas pudding, now bought so dearly, that I ate nearly half of it. It did have a slightly plastic taint, but I persevered. Today, I threw away the colander with the pudding basin welded to it, and relegated the burned saucepan to non-food 'other duties' such as for melting candle wax.