My mother didn’t have a lot of rules for us as we were growing up, save one: never waste food. And she had a hard time enforcing it on me, because as a child I was a very, very poor eater. On days when I wasn’t successful in pushing off my lunch to my friends, I’d empty the lunch box into the trash and cover it up with crumpled newspapers so my mother won’t find out when she gets home from work.

Mothers beware! If you child is a poor eater, stop forcing them to eat, because they may grow up to be a glutton like me.

After you grow older though, it becomes so much easier to confess all these sins to your parents without the risk of being grounded. I also threw in the story of how I broke her crystal deer family while dusting the showcase one day. And how my brother and I would ‘skate’ indoors wearing Dad’s socks on a floor sprinkled with talcum powder. Although she couldn’t punish me for a decade old sin, she did however tell me that there’s a special place in Hell waiting for me.

But in hindsight, it’s the only rule that mattered, I guess. Every time I cook now, I have a hard time wasting anything. Case in point: the beetroot pulp that were the lonely remnants from the Beet Gel recipe earlier.

No food in my kitchen should feel left out. So while the jelly was gelling, I got started on the pudding.

From the 2 juiced beetroots, I had about 1.5 cups of pulp leftover. If yours does not smell beet like, if you have extracted every ounce of their flavour, you can throw it out in good conscience. Or convert it into compost like my mother-in-law probably would.

But if the pulp still smells beet-like and has a little life left in it, go ahead and make this pudding.