Summer Pudding - by Big Beautiful Dreamer (~BHM, Stuffing, ~~WG)

[Big Beautiful Dreamer]

~BHM, Stuffing, ~~WG - A chef and restauranteur wears the results of his love for food, to his wife's delight.

[Author's note: The characters of Max, a chef, Caroline, a musician, and Max's brother- and sister-in-law are taken from "Dead Heat" by Dick Francis. Nothing else in this story is related to or intended to relate to the book.]

Summer Pudding


by Big Beautiful Dreamer
​

“Uff.” Resigned, I sank down on the bed, the pants still unfastened. I sighed heavily.

“What is it?” Caroline sat down and slipped her arm round me. I made a face.

“These won’t do up.”

“So it’s the fault of the trousers, is it?” she teased, getting up and dropping a kiss on my head. “Poor love. Let me show you an old female trick. Lie down.”

“What?”

“Lie down,” she said impatiently. I did, flopping back, my legs still hanging off the side.

“Now. Suck in and zip up.”

“I’ve tried that.”

She sighed. “Do it again.”

Resigned, I did. The zip slid reluctantly upward and I just managed to catch the clasp.

“Great,” I said. “So long as I don’t stand up.”

“Here,” she said, grabbing my hands. She helped me to my feet. I looked down. The trousers were done up, but a gut I didn’t used to have swelled over the waistband, flabby and pale like bread dough after kneading. My belly appeared to be folded into halves, the belly button hiding among the stack of midriff rolls.

Caroline rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to hear it.” She kissed my cheek, briskly, and popped into the bathroom, shutting the door.

Resigned, I pulled on a turtleneck, smoothed it over my protruding front, and added a sweater that I told myself camouflaged the new growth.

It was only after marrying Caroline that I’d begun, slowly but inexorably, to put on weight. On New Year’s Eve, my cummerbund had been, if anything, a trifle loose. Now I was afraid to even try it on. The loose, elastic-waist chef pants and untucked smock-like tops I usually wore had allowed me to pretend that my waistline wasn’t thickening, and once home from work I would change into sweatpants, but when I occasionally left the kitchen, my civilian clothes weren’t cutting me any slack. Far too little slack, in fact.

I chewed on my lower lip, debating whether I wanted to step on the scale. I decided against it. All it would do would depress me. I stood, shifting from foot to foot, waiting for Caroline to finish. My restaurants were closed for the day, since it was Monday, and we were going out to dinner. Quite often, Mondays would be a busman’s holiday, with me preparing dinner in the kitchen, but tonight we were going to Inigo Jones and I was getting hungry. My stomach growled. Frowning, I put a hand on it, unthinkingly recoiling at its size. I swore aloud. Maybe I would only have a salad.

I had tarte a l’oseille (for a starter!), shamelessly pinching quite a lot of Caroline’s baked truffled Brie en croute, then Caroline and I shared the carre d’agneau en croute, sauce a la menthe (“shared” being a relative term), and I finally finished with a large summer pudding. Caroline declined even a mouthful, stating that she was “stuffed to the brim,” so of course I wound up eating every scrap, which no doubt I should not have, but I secretly wanted to know if it tasted better than mine. The texture was not as smooth as I would have liked, but that’s a matter of preference.

Salad? Ha. Like Caroline, I was stuffed to the brim, though with a lot more reason. Inigo Jones portions are generous, and anything served en croute is going to be filling. A good pastry requires a lot of lard, or at least butter, but Inigo Jones used pure lard, and it will fill the tummy. Full, I was, then, so full in fact that I agreed to coffee, which I seldom do after a good dinner, preferring to savor the tastes lingering in my mouth. But not much beats coffee as a digestive, and I needed one.

Caroline waited until the waiter had slipped away before raising her eyebrows to her hairline.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Well what?”

“Coffee?”

I laid a hand on my shamefully bulging belly. “Stuffed.” I stifled a belch. “I can’t actually believe I ate so much.”

“Did you eat more than I did?” she asked kindly.

I stifled another belch. “Where do you think all your starter got to?”

She laughed, then, and when the coffee came poured in just the amount of cream I liked. I could tell she was fidgety, she wasn’t much for sitting at table after a meal, but she waited, and let me take the coffee medicinally. Even so, I couldn’t help the grunt that escaped when I stood. As we left, the cool night air was bracing. I hadn’t realized how stuffy that restaurant had been. I ran a finger around the inside of my turtleneck, damp with perspiration.

“Let’s stroll a bit,” Caroline suggested, taking my arm. We strolled. Periodically I rested my free hand on my aching belly, checking in, as it were. My abdomen was stretched almost to bursting and my stomach churned heavily, protesting the rich load I had poured into it. There were a few regulars at my own restaurant who always looked flushed when they finished, and I was beginning to understand why. My waistband seemed to have shrunk, and I was sure that each breath would pop the clasp, sending my sweater northward, as there was a limited amount of real estate it was designed to cover.

“Max! Caroline!” a voice boomed, and Mick Jensen loomed out of the fog. Mick had more money than would be good for most people, but he also had a sensible head on his shoulders. He did something with the Internet that was essentially a license to print money, and divested himself of some of it by owning horses.

Mick slung his hand onto Caroline’s shoulder, giving it a friendly pat. “Doing well, I trust? Every time I read the papers, there’s something nice in there about the restaurants.”

“Doing well,” I said truthfully. I had been a little uneasy about leaving my restaurant in Newmarket in a chef de cuisine’s hands and cooking most nights at the London restaurant, but it was working out far better than I had cynically hoped.

“What have you been up to?”

“We just ate at Inigo Jones,” Caroline put in.

Mick laughed delightedly. “A night off, and you go to spy out the competition!”

I smiled. “Had to see how his summer pudding was.”

“Well?”

“Didn’t care for the texture,” I admitted, softening the criticism with a wink.

Mick glanced at my protruding gut. “How many servings did you have to sample, then?” Without waiting for an answer, he patted Caroline on the shoulder again. “Have to run.”

I waited until he was well out of earshot before letting slip a muttered curse. Caroline squeezed my arm.

“There’s no escaping it, is there? I’ve got fat.” I said it as bluntly as I could, half-hoping that Caroline would deny it.

Instead she laughed, the soft chuckle that let me know that what I’d said was true.

“Lots of people don’t trust a chef who’s too thin,” she said, squeezing my arm again. “And, anyway, I wouldn’t go that far.”

I rolled my eyes. “There’s such a thing as overdoing the point.”

“So … no more puddings?”

I considered. “Maybe I should cut back on the feed bag. After all, I expect I take in a lot of stray calories cooking and tasting.”

“Well, but you have to.”

“True enough.”

Caroline leaned in and, with her free hand, patted my comically bulging belly, still straining the limits of the sweater. “Mick’s always been a trifle … insensitive. I shouldn’t worry about it.”

Easy for her to say. We strolled in silence for a while, and, in the cab home, talked of other things.

Still, I let Mick’s casual comment roll around in the back of my mind like a pot of stock on simmer. I began making lighter meals at home, and, yes, fewer puddings. I dropped nearly a stone without serious effort. There, I thought, not so bad after all, and lowered my guard. The pounds crept back on and brought friends. Even my elastic-waist chef pants began to pinch and the shirts began to strain at the buttons, particularly after lunch and dinner. I reluctantly bought larger sizes, wincing at the numbers.

Guy Fawkes day came, and my brother and his wife had built a bonfire to amuse the children. One by one, we took turns jumping it for luck. The children had several jumps each, but the adults -- I, at least, overfull of the dinner that I had prepared -- held back. Finally, Caroline coaxed me into a jump. I backed up to give myself a running start and plodded heavily toward the low fire. With a grunt, I jumped it, just clearing the thing, but landed heavily on my right ankle. Spraining it, as it turned out.

“Oh, bad luck,” Caroline sympathized, and the children crowded round to see if I was actually dead. I wasn’t, of course, but would have to stay off it for at least a week while it healed up.

Friends and colleagues were sympathetic. When chefs visit the ailing, however, they don’t bring chicken broth from a can. I was treated to homemade butternut squash soup, rich with cream; tomato bisque ditto; a delicate lamb and rice dish, bread pudding, even a Welsh Rarebit made with three kinds of English cheese that had me scraping the plate. By the time I was allowed off the sofa, even my most bagged-out sweatpants were beginning to tug in the rear.

Reveling in my first shower in six days, I let the warm water stream over me. Absentmindedly soaping my chest, I moved southward and was dismayed at the feel of my abdomen. I blinked my eyes open. My waistline had become … well … vast. I slowly ran a hand down the protrusion and back up. It had become unmistakably convex, arcing from sternum to privates, and I discovered that I was pinching a lot more than an inch. A good firm squeeze gave me a soft double handful of belly, with the consistency of bread dough ready to be shaped. I continued to poke and prod as I washed, not quite working up the nerve to see if I could still see my feet, and having just recovered from a sprain, not quite ready to try to touch my toes in a wet shower stall.

I got out and toweled off, facing the mirror, but let my gaze drop. My reflected stomach was round and paunchy, love handles beginning to form on the sides where fat was making a foray toward the back. Seen in the mirror, my waistline resembled a great curving trek, one I doubted that a hook and clasp on any pair of trousers currently hanging in my closet could successfully make.

I tugged the towel -- had it shrunk? -- around my bulk and, feeling like a great land mammal, lumbered out to the kitchen where Caroline was having a cup of tea. She looked up expectantly.

“Look at this,” I said plaintively.

“At what?”

I slapped my midsection, dismayed at the movement that resulted. “Fat.”

Caroline frowned. “You’ve lost weight, haven’t you?”

“At one point, yes, but it’s all come roaring back, hasn’t it? I’ve been lying on the sofa hogging up like a bear for winter.”

Caroline’s frown deepened. “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. I don’t allow anyone to say rude things about my friends.” She stood and hugged me from behind, letting her hands slide down my chest and along the slope of my belly.

“Um.”

“Yes, Max?”

“Maybe I should … diet …”

I could feel Caroline’s eye-roll. “Why ever? All it does is make you grouchy.”

“Grouchy, really?”

“Didn’t want to tell you while you were laid up, did I? But all this fall, while you were so conscientious about eating less, you were … well … grouchy.”

I turned around to face her. “Grouchy.”

“Mm-hm.”

I felt a smile quirk unwillingly at the corner of my mouth. “Have we got any blueberries?”

“Blueberries, what for?”

“I think I want to make us a summer pudding.”

Needless to say, the majority of that pudding went straight into my own belly. I was slightly shocked at how downing an entire summer pudding didn’t fill me up as it used to; an hour later I found myself braising duck slices and peeling apples for dinner. And eating more than my fair share. I found myself gazing at Caroline as we cleared the table. Was I jealous that I was getting fat and she wasn’t? I banished the thought. Though her waistline was a tad softer, she worked out religiously, and there was only a hint of softness around her chin. Her biceps were any model’s envy. She caught me staring and blushed. As if she knew what I was thinking, she said defensively, “I have to keep my shape. My arms are on display so often.”

“Mmm,” I said dryly.

She wrapped me in her arms from behind, a move that seemed destined to become a favorite gesture. “You’re mine and I love you, and you’re a famous chef and your public loves you,” she said firmly, then clattered the silverware into the sink to begin the washing-up.

By the time we went to my brother’s for Christmas, I was slightly more reconciled to Mick’s thoughtless remark, although I had put on more weight. My belly unmistakably protruded under my chef’s shirts, and my staff had let slip the occasional remark about not letting scraps go to “waist.” No one else seemed to blink an eye, almost as if, as Caroline had said, no one expected a chef to be whippet-thin.

Sally had, with trepidation, planned to make Christmas dinner. I’d offered out of habit, but she’d turned me down. This was the first time we’d actually been to their house that I hadn’t done the cooking, and she was nervous. I’d encountered the phenomenon before, and knew the best way of dealing with it. I counseled Toby to pour her a glass of wine and for him to keep us both out of the kitchen. Consequently, we didn’t get near the stove until we sat down to dinner.

Fortunately, the look on my face at the first mouthful was unfeigned. I closed my eyes and felt a huge smile slide across my face at the first bite of succulent roast goose, beautifully seasoned and with hints of cranberry, orange, and other spices.

“Delicious,” I proclaimed with my mouth full, and everyone, it seemed to me, relaxed a little at that. Even so, Sally kept her eyes pinned to my plate the entire time. As much to reassure her as anything else, I cleaned my plate rapidly and piled it high twice more.

By the time I neared the end of the second plateful, though, I realized that my gesture might be a problem. I was getting full. No -- I was getting stuffed. My trousers were about to pop, and my stomach was full and starting to ache. I could feel the skin of my belly stretch taut with every breath. As discreetly as I could without dropping my napkin, I managed to undo the clasp of my trousers, which afforded a little relief. The third round was a mistake, though. I found myself pausing longer and longer between bites, and my stomach seemed to visibly bulge with each swallow. I felt the first bites of the zipper sliding itself down without my consent, but I had to admit it felt a little better. I glanced down. My belly had ballooned outward, pressing tightly against my shirt. Oof. Thank goodness for the last bite. I managed to conceal my relief as I shook my head at Toby’s offer of yet more food, and slowly and carefully stood.

Oh, dear. My gut understandably clutched. It was all I could do not to moan aloud. Caroline caught my glance.

“It’s so nice out,” she said, “would it be all right if we went for a walk?”

I managed not to wince. Walking was the last thing I thought I could manage. I had underestimated her, of course. I waddled heavily after her out of the house, but no sooner were we round the corner and out of sight than we sank onto a bus bench.

“Oh thank you,” I mumbled, and belched loudly. “Oops. Sorry.” I laid a hand on my engorged belly. “Whoa. Ate too much,” I said unnecessarily. Caroline laughed softly and laid a hand on my stomach.

“Oh, my,” she said, feeling the firmness of my distended gut. Gently she prodded it, finding no give at all. Taut and round, my aching belly was stretched and sore, pushing roundly against the fabric of my shirt. I let my head drop back, gulping in the cold winter air and shifting slightly as my stomach, stuffed to bursting, churned and grumbled.

“It was really very good,” she added after a moment.

“Mmm,” I agreed. I hiccuped. Gently I massaged my bloated bulge, hoping for some relief from the steady discomfort. Surprisingly, the rubbing helped, not least because it coaxed up a couple of embarrassingly large belches.

“We should be getting back,” Caroline said, and so we did, but not before I managed to at least get the zipper back up. The clasp was out of the question.

“You must be freezing,” Toby exclaimed, and I realized that I was and Caroline’s cheeks were rosy.

“Have some hot cider,” Sally urged, but I shook my head and managed to smile.

“No, really,” I said truthfully. “Couldn’t manage another swallow.” I patted my distended and aching belly, producing a convincing thump. Amanda beamed.

Good cheer and lots of customers at the restaurants carried me through the holidays, but on New Year’s Day, feeling as though I ought to, I reluctantly stepped onto the scale. My eyes widened at the number staring back at me, a number I admittedly had to crane a bit to read.

“Caroline,” I called. Caroline padded into the bathroom, yawning.

“Look at this,” I demanded. She glanced at the number.

“Oh,” was all she said. For a one-syllable word, it packed a punch. I’d put on close to 40 pounds in the past year.

Seeing the look on my face, she embraced me from behind, sliding her hands down the slope of my -- two hundred and forty pounds! -- and hugging me. “Can I tell you something?”

“Mm.”

“I like it.”

I blinked. “You like what?”

“Your belly, what do you think?”

I wriggled out of her embrace and turned to face her. I was still naked, and I was beginning to feel a draft. Caroline was almost naked, wearing only her dressing gown. Her face glowed unmistakably, and she lightly traced a finger down my front, making me shiver.

“You’re tall … and broad-shouldered … and cuddly,” she murmured. “That lovely round belly feels so soft and warm …”

“Caroline…”

“Shh,” she put a finger to my lips. Her other hand found a part of me that was anything but soft. Gently she propelled me back toward the bed. Our stomachs growled in harmony, making her laugh.

“Oh, goodie,” she said. “Let’s make breakfast.”

I made cinnamon-apple pancakes while she sliced fruit and warmed the leftover of an apple pie. Between flipping cakes, I whipped up a batch of cheddar biscuits. She poured tea as we sat, and I poured a warm apple glaze over the pancakes.

Caroline ate, but most of her attention was devoted to aiming forkfuls of food into my mouth. Finally she abandoned her plate and pulled her chair next to mine. Half embarrassed, I leaned back and let her feed me. Forkful after forkful was steered into my mouth, the warm sweet pancakes and glaze, the cool juicy fruit, the flaky cheese biscuits, huge mouthfuls of hot apple pie, the crust dissolving on my tongue. I could feel my belly fill and it felt marvelous. I moaned aloud. My stomach ballooned with each mouthful, every swallow swelling my gut, beginning to stretch and ache as my stomach filled beyond capacity. I laid a hand on my distended belly, feeling the skin of my midriff stretched tight and tender. The soft unfed gut that had blocked my view on the scale was now firm and swollen, protruding roundly outward.

Caroline lifted the plate holding the remains of the pie. “Nearly done.” I groaned and pressed my aching and engorged belly, producing an embarrassingly loud belch. Caroline patted my belly. “Well done,” she said, “now open.”

“No,” I groaned. “I’m stuffed.” I was, too. I thought I would burst if I swallowed another bite. But Caroline placed an enormous mouthful of apple filling and flaky crust in my open mouth, and reflexively I chewed and swallowed. My cheeks ached, my jaw was tired, swallowing was an effort. I felt the pie slide down and moaned as my bursting stomach clutched and churned. “Ohhhh.” Caroline gently and carefully tugged me to my feet, the last position I wanted to be in.

“Shh.” She led me as one leads a captive bear. Obediently I waddled after her, my aching and gorged belly churning and heaving. A dozen pancakes, a dozen cheddar biscuits, a large bowlful of fruit, fully half an apple pie had slid down my gullet and now resided uneasily in my swollen and tender gut, which understandably stuck out firm and aching, sloshing heavily with each reluctant step.

Caroline eased me onto the bed. I groaned as the movement caused my bursting stomach to slop and grumble. Without a word, she slid in next to me and began to massage me. The gentle and steady movement soothed my painfully distended midsection and roused my privates, stirring desire I thought I was far too full to experience. She carefully aligned herself atop my mountainous belly and I protested.

“No,” I grunted. “No, too … full,” I puffed. She laughed at me and silenced me with a kiss. I expected only increased discomfort, but instead her slight weight on my full and sloshing belly felt wonderful, like a thorough and expert massage. As she guided me into her, I lay back, content to let her take the lead, in fact, too full and sleepy to do otherwise. The effect of her whole body sliding up and down my bloated and engorged gut was hypnotic. Her movements aided the slow process of digestion, and I kept stifling belches until she said, “Don’t.” The warmth and intimacy enveloped me, and the rhythmic sloshing of my full stomach became part and parcel of the lovemaking so that we were adrift in a sea of togetherness, lapped by the waves, warmed by the sun, tethered to consciousness by moans and murmurs, and I felt myself climax. It was indescribably marvelous, and I felt a deep pang of regret as we disentangled herself and she lay with her head on my damp chest, her hand resting on my still-distended belly.

“Max,” she murmured after a long while, so softly I almost didn’t hear her.

“Mm,”

“Don’t ever ever lose that belly.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said, and in the dimness I felt her smile.

 

[lizzy]

 

[Risible]

 

[Big Beautiful Dreamer]

 

[Koldun]