I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

We came home from a medieval Sunday at our usual meeting spot in Linton - the one on the river Wharfe near Wetherby, as opposed to Linton-on-Ouse, which is on the Ouse and located about twenty miles north-east of this Linton - with a loaf of not-terribly-exciting bread. After trying it for toast and finding it inferior to my sturdy home-made sourdough bread with oats in, I decided to make bread pudding out of it. The mushy texture cried out for something which didn't require any real structure.

I decided to go for a pudding which was not very sweet, and top it with sweetened cream, for a little extra moistness and creamy deliciousness.

• half a loaf, more or less, of squishy bread. White bloomer, as it is called in the UK is about right.
• two small apples
• a small handful of dried dates
• three eggs
• 1 1/2 cups of milk, or about 350 ml
• 1 tsp or so of cinnamon
• a pinch of cumin

Lightly beat the eggs and milk together, add the spices and mix well. The cumin was an experiment. I wanted something more than just cinnamon, and while I would usually have used coriander, I didn't have it to hand. If you do want to try the cumin, go easy on it. Pour the liquid over the bread and fruit and squish it down. Put it into a 175C/350F oven for an hour.

When it comes out, the cumin should have given it a lovely fragrance but not have had a large effect on the flavour, only adding a few grace notes to the palate. I served it with heavy cream which had been sweetened by mixing in some confectioners/icing sugar.