Rice is twice as nice

Sorry - you're all waiting patiently for what to do with this week's stockpile food, aside from eating it fresh of course, but I got caught up in getting the kids off to school. Today, I have my kitchen back and the first thing I did, besides defrosting cube steak for dinner and put potatoes on to boil for mashed potatoes, was make rice pudding.

My kids love rice pudding. It's sweet and filling and they don't know that it's full of protein and calcium (from the milk), as well as fiber (because I use brown rice). They just know that I don't care how much of it that they eat.

Rice pudding is versatile. You can add anything to it, like fresh blueberries or strawberries or peaches after it's made, or cook it with raisins or dried cranberries or dried apricots or with nuts or whatever you have lying around in your dried fruits and nuts supply. Homemade rice pudding can be plopped into a small plastic container and sent to school for dessert for a cheap and nutritious alternative to those Jello Pudding cups.

Here's how I make my rice pudding:

In a slow cooker put:

1 cup brown rice
3 cups milk
1 tablespoon butter
3/4 to 1 cup brown sugar
couple of dashes of nutmeg
a few more sprinkles of cinnamon
whatever dried fruit listed above I feel like adding
1 tsp vanilla (that's edited to add. Sorry about that. Don't know where my mind was. vanilla makes lots of recipes better.)

Stir it up and cook on medium to high for about 4 hours. You'll know when it's done. It will be creamy and nice and the rice kernals will explode. If it seems a little dry, add more milk (or cream or half-and-half). If it's too wet, let it simmer a little more. If your family is full of big eaters and rice pudding addicts, double the recipe, if this is for you and you're on a diet, use stevia or splenda and skim milk and skip the added butter.

Serve for breakfast or as a side to lunch or dessert for dinner.

When it runs out, slow cook some more.

Good stuff.