Andy,
Here is the link to that Christmas
pudding site I mentioned. He has a pretty good recipe (close to the one in use in our family), lots of info, even pudding jokes. The guy who runs it is a serious pudding-lover. Let me know if you want our old family recipe - I can scan it.
Yeah, I know 'suet' might
sounds a bit yuk, but it's not. And it's essential. Suet itself is just solid white stuff, and fine to deal with, less messy than butter or margarine, for example. And not even a smidgen as yuk to deal with as, say, raw meat or offal like liver is. Making pate is yuk, unfortunately, while eating it is great.
Put it this way: you'll never see it (unlike, say chickens' feet) and you'd never know a pudding
had suet in it unless you saw the recipe/ingredients or were told.
Even I (a once-was vego) had no problem in handling the suet, grating it and mixing it in (and I can get squeamish about many things meaty). But it
has to be suet - nothing else gives the pudding that deep moist richness and flavour...well, of course there is the brandy as well.
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Biscuits are something where I
think the Brits and the Yanks part company. What I call 'biscuits' seems to be what you call cookies, and what they call 'biscuits' in the USA... well, no. I tried a couple of 'em and didn' t like any but also they seem to be quite different things we're talking about.
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And grits? Thanks for the link, I always wonderred what they were, and 'hominy grits'. But I don't think so, I'm very happy with porridge (you call it oatmeal perhaps?) and muesli.
