SUMMER PUDDING

If you're like me, you'd prefer digging in the garden to tinkering in the kitchen. The perfect recipe should have five ingredients or less and one of them must be water. So here's an easy dessert that looks beautiful and tastes divine. It's my adaptation of the 'puddings' I have loved at the Henley Royal Regatta. This is a poor people's dessert, so I don't know how it made it to such an exalted location. There are no measurements - follow your heart and enjoy the results.

1 loaf day-old white bread summer berries (blackberries, blueberries,

sugar or Splenda to taste raspberries, strawberries)

1 packet gelatine summer fruit sliced very thin or

chopped very small

Butter the inside of a bowl. Remove the crust off all bread slices and butter one side. Line the bowl with the bread slices. Leave no gaps.

Cook the fruit with the sugar or Splenda until it's all mushy and beautifully colored like rubies on the headdress of a maharani. Add gelatine. One tablespoon of cherry Jell-o will also work. Pour into the bread-lined bowl. Cover with the rest of the bread slices. Push it down with something heavy like a brick. Cover with plastic wrap or a kichen towel. Refrigerate overnight. If you're brave, which I'm not, unmold it into a serving dish. Otherwise, just slice it from the bowl and serve with Devonshire cream (Wegman's) or vanilla ice cream. Bask in the compliments.