GRANDMA LOBOTOMY’S PLUM PUDDING RECEIPT – As business is somewhat slow this week without Coach Naugahyde to flog, This Columnist is offering her Grandma Lobotomy’s receipt for homemade plum pudding, a Lobotomy family staple since the first of our clan arrived on these shores in the hold of a garbage scow in 1927 bearing the eponymous plum pudding in Grandma Lobotomy’s snood. She insists upon preparing this bizarre concoction every year at Christmastide, the protest of her family availing not. Here it is – and don’t say we didn’t warn you!

Take a bushel of slightly ripe plums and beat them with a Louisville Slugger baseball bat (unvarnished, of course) until they’re a quivering mass of jelly. Throw away the fruit and keep the stones. Place the stones in the bottom of a 40-quart kettle on top of your Glenwood range over a hot fire fueled by the bark of the bungo-bungo tree (obtainable locally from the Bung King of Northfield); make sure the stones are arranged in eccentric circles, from smallest to largest. Carefully cover the stones with three quarts of gin, two of brandy, one of whiskey, and a gallon of turpentine; add a pound of cornstarch, six cups of sawdust and a dash of sugar; stir in a quart of mare’s milk, a pound of chili powder and a teaspoon of Booker’s bourbon (for color). Let simmer for three days or until the wallpaper in your kitchen peels off, whichever comes first (usually the wallpaper), stirring gently with a cast iron spoon. After three days (or the fall of the wallpaper), add in the following: one large box of plaster of Paris, a small Yule log, eight ounces of Angostura bitters and a cup of rye flour. Throw in more wood and allow mixture to boil until it sets off the smoke alarm; remove from stove, set outside in the woodshed to cool, and surround with “CAUTION” tape. Just before Christmas dinner, throw out the entire mixture and eat the Little Debbie cupcakes Cousin George always brings.