Wow, what a hassle trying to find workable recipes for this - every one I looked at had different proportions and there was no generic model.  So, here's my composite endeavour, serves 24-30 and can be adjusted easily enough to accommodate degrees of need.  The grand plan is we'll make vegan ones as there are one or two vegans on our radar, and will use lots of Fairtrade ingredients such as sugar, fruit, spices and juice.  Hopefully it'll work out OK and if they're horrid, well blame me.

All Together Christmas Puddings –Fairtrade TTVV – may contain nuts!

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

To make roughly 24 – 30 individual (quarter pint) puddings

Simply take an approximation to...

About 60 oz of dried vine fruits (currants, sultanas, raisins), soaked overnight in orange juice

About 16 oz of dried fruit and peel including apricots, cherries and mixed peel, according to taste

About 8 oz of ground almonds plus/minus about 2 oz chopped almonds (optional)

3 lemons zested and juiced

1 orange zested and juiced

1 large carrot, grated

1 large cooking apple or a couple of granny smith type eating apples, grated

8 oz fresh white or wholemeal breadcrumbs

8 oz flour – type seems variable!

16 oz vegetable suet

16 oz dark brown sugar

1 tsp mixed spice

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp nutmeg

Pinch of salt if desired.

Half pint soya milk, cow milk or rice milk according to preference

Large dollop of black treacle (add to the 'milk' and mix to an emulsion, it's easier!)

4 large eggs beaten or 4 tbsps vegetable oil or half a pack of tofu or some kind of egg substitute!

Lashings of laughter

Lots of love

Method

Gather a large crowd of people – 24 to 30 seems good – and allocate each of them some ingredients.

In a very large bowl – a new, clean washing up bowl might be good – place all the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly together.

Add the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly – add more milk or fruit juice if needed to bind the mixture.

Spoon in to ¼ pint plastic basins (Lakeland sell in packs of six or save from supermarket puds).  It is probably good to grease the basins lightly first.

Leave a gap of about ½ inch or 1 cm at the top for expansion. 

Take home and steam for a couple of hours

To reheat, either steam for 20 minutes or microwave for 1 minute on full power.

Enjoy with custard, cream, boozy butter, ice cream or whatever your favourite is.

Serving suggestion – with friends, neighbours or strangers

Just saw this on Bishop Nick Baines' blog.  It's great!  Look out for the guy with the 'wet floor' sign.

I am intrigued by the flash mob phenomenon, how it captivates people fleetingly before they just pick up as if nothing had happened.  Someone asked me if they lip-synch or sing, and I haven't a clue, but either is very clever.  Anyway, this seems to capture somehting of what Advent is about - surprise and disruption that delights.  Enjoy.

The news tells us that a second explosion at the New Zealand coal mine means there is now no hope of survivors... and the media circus will soon leave town because now there's no hope of a happy ending it ceases to be interesting.  But for 29 families the horror continues... now waiting not for the possibility of a loved one's return but for the recovery of a loved one's body.  Don't know what to say really, just seems wrong to let it slip by unremarked. 

Eternal rest grant unto them, oh Lord, may they rest in peace.

This morning I've been starting to look for poems and readings that might find their way into some of our Christmas services to augment (if such a word is allowed) the Biblical narrative we know so well.  Due to past incompetence, I have two copies of little red book called The Big Book of Christmas which has lots of poems and other things in it.  Flicking through I came across this one which I rather liked...

Nativity

I wrapped a toilet roll with paper

And drew a king on it

Complete with crown and a gift for the child.

Then I made another,

With a turban because he was from the east

Which I knew was romantic and far away

Without any clear idea where.

And yet another, Mrs Harman said there were three,

With gifts of Gold, Frankenstein and Mire,

Or so I thought.

Then shepherds, more toilet rolls,

And cotton wool for sheep.

An angel was a toilet roll with wings,

Joseph was another toilet roll with a pipe-cleaner staff,

And Mary a toilet roll with a scrap of blue cloth.

The child was a blob of Plasticine

Safe in a tiny cardboard match-box manger

Filled with straw.

I took it home and Mum put it n the mantelpiece

But she hid the child.

And on Christmas morning,

4 a.m. on Christmas morning, with a cup of tea in her hand

And a bleary leave me alone I'm still aleep look in her eye,

She set me and my brother searching for the child.

Cold, cold, cold, warmer, cold, cold until hot

And we found him safely wrapped in a tissue

Inside the cupboard under the stairs.

Gently we laid him in place before his mother

A scribbled, toilet roll Virgin and that was the best Christmas.

Eric Petrie The Big Book of Christmas pub MacMillan, 2005 page 9

A couple of online place you may wish to drop off during Advent.

Firstly one from BUGB/Northumbria Community which you can find here a weekly (or thereabouts) offering professionally produced.  Easy listening audio with a thoughtful edge.

Then there is a more collaborative blog option, the brainchild of Andy Goodliff with various people offering thoughts for most days of Advent.  Having run for a few years there is a sense that maybe some contributors are growing tired and opting out, but there are 'sign-ups' for most days at Hopeful Imagination (here) including rather a lot of December born Baptists!

If you happen to be in our neck of the woods, next week we begin a series of four lunch time reflections on Thursdays at 12:30 - with a simple lunch to share - based on the Magnet resource The Promise of Advent.

Hopefully something for most people in there somewhere