Reusing the plastic bowl the Christmas pudding comes in.

I realise that some people on this forum may hate Christmas pudding, or not be able to eat it. I also know that others make their own. But for those of us who are more time impoverished, the pudding from the supermarket comes in a plastic bowl. It's horribly greasy to start with, but given a good scrubbing once the pudding is eaten, it will withstand heat so could have other uses.
My other half had a horrible virus a month ago which caused him to take a fortnight off work. One of the symptoms was a cough which kept on going, and was quite frightening. one of the only ways he could stop coughing was to do an inhalation with boiling water and Vicks. This is where last year's Christmas pudding bowl came into its own - you don't want to use a kitchen bowl for this, but the pudding bowl withstood the boiling water, and didn't really need to be cleaned out too thoroughly in between uses, until he was better.

Sounds like a better use for the bowl than Christmas pudding. It is one thing that I truly loathe and I am forever scarred from having to spend the entire afternoon (missing the Christmas party) in the headmistress's office looking at a lump of Christmas pudding that I just couldn't eat. I was 5. I was only let off when my mum came in to find me because I hadn't come out of school. My Christmas hat, that I wore throughout the ordeal, was a pleated, dull pink coloured, lampshade like affair.

That reminds me painfully of some of the worst aspects of school when I was a lad. The petty power wielding of teachers who were not psychologically suitable for their job. What you ate. How you ate it. One of the things I learned about raising children was to pick your arguments - the important things - and let some things go. The rich taste of Christmas pud doesn't go down well with a lot of kids, but they may well come to like it later. If you don't leave them with mental scars by kicking up too much fuss !

I do like Christmas pud. A lot. Mrs C-H makes ours, so no plastic pot. Not necessarily the eco options with all that steaming mind. But when I did buy Christmas pud I used to save the pot for microwaved upside down syrup sponge puddings, which are easy and calorific (I was a student and rowing).

Oh no, Ploshkin - that is such a sad memory (especially poignant with the lampshade hat!) I can remember crying because the dinner lady made me eat the innards of a pilchard - although I came from a home where we were not encouraged to be faddy and waste food, we were never made to eat the insides of fish, and it all felt a bit unfair

My other half has just reminded me about another use for the plastic bowl (I've just been telling him Ploshkin's sad story)
He reminded me that he has often used them as a base for papier mache, if he needs an almost spherical form (working on the inside of the bowl rather than the outside)

Oh Ploshkin, what an appalling thing to happen to a 5 year old!
I had a not dissimilar experience with tinned tomatoes on a school dinner. To this day I can't bear the juice of them running about contaminating everything, though will use them in cooking.
No further suggestions for using the pudding bowls, btw,