Christmas Pudding

I'm baking a Christmas pudding, and using a recipe that has been handed down from my grandmother, and I'd think at least from her mother too.

It takes three days to prepare, day one is mixing all the dry ingredients, day two is the fruit juices and butter, day three is the eggs and alcohol.

What was fun was trying to get the recipe from my mother, her first draft was unintelligible, of course she could follow it, but it made no sense to me. So I got her to write it out again. I went into the shop to buy all the ingredients, and realised that all her measurements were in pounds and ounces - and here I am, metric boy, all meters and litres, I spent ten minutes tracking down an assistant who knew the conversion rate!

And it's not just the recipe that's a family secret - it's how you cook the thing too - or more to the point what you cook it in - an old fashioned sweet tin. I've spent two years looking in cookery shops and kitchen suppliers for such a tin, and to no avail, I went out last year and bought a saucepan that I thought I could use.

Last week my mother came over on holiday and brought with her the tin that she has used for the last 15 years, and that my grandmother has used for 30 years before that. There's more history in this tin than I've seen in my whole life, and I've been welling up with tears, and saying silent prayers to my family, both alive and gone. I only hope that I do them proud, not just in producing a good pudding, but in continuing the history