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November 15, 2006

Bread Pudding

Seth Dillingham is a long-time BBEdit and Mailsmith customer, and one of the best — not "best" as in "thanks to his large order my quarterly bonus was one of the best I've ever gotten", but "best" as in "his feedback on our products is among the best we've gotten". Somewhere along the line, Seth made the transition from "customer" to "beta site", helping us out by giving feedback on pre-release versions. In this respect, too, he's been exemplary. (It doesn't hurt that he's a long-time professional software developer, and knows what sort of feedback he'd like to get if our positions were reversed.)

This past summer, Seth wrote in with some requests for things that were personally and professionally important to him: new features, and improvements to some existing features. An extended email conversation followed, culminating in a very productive meeting, resulting in Seth landing a new client.

Along the way, I learned that he and I had a lot of common ground. Food's right up there on the list. Once a week, we meet for breakfast at an establishment that's convenient to one of us (one's close to me, the other's close to him), eat pancakes, talk shop, and sync up on our ongoing projects.

Anyway, Seth's wife Corinne is a semi-professional cook. She doesn't run a restaurant or prepare food for a living, but she obviously enjoys cooking: big family events, small catering jobs, to say nothing of keeping Seth appropriately fed and watered. Which brings us to the sentient bread pudding. After yesterday's breakfast meeting, Seth presented me with a pan of it, uncooked, with baking instructions and a little container of sauce to be applied after heating. This morning, K popped the pan in the oven before she left for work, probably because she knew, based on Seth's description, that the smell would get me out of bed and in motion.

Well, it worked. Corinne's bread pudding smelled great at operating temperature, and tasted even better. It had the great egg and cinnamon and nutmeg flavor that a good bread pudding has, but there's an extra-special je ne sais quois which I suspect comes from the embedded chocolate chips. And even though it's been abnormally warm this November (sixty degrees, WTF?), this bread pudding warmed me up nicely and got the day off to a great start. Right up there with Christine Lavin's French Toast Bread Pudding.

Bread pudding: it's not just for breakfast anymore. Thanks, Corinne. :-)