Rice Pudding

I'll give you some rice pudding porn to drool over while I ramble for a couple paragraphs here...

I must tell you that there was a bit of a break in posting here on The Fox Fix because one fateful morning last week I tried to take a picture of my glazed cranberry bundt cake, and, not for lack of trying, blurry is all I got. (see below).

The camera refused to focus, and that was all there was to it. I was very loath to inform Eric of this news, as I am just coming out of an extremely-irresponsible-with-very-important-things stage (I hope). I did tell of this awful thing, with much promising to be more careful with expensive devices around things like butter and sugar and heat (um, my life right now?).

HOWEVER, and VERY FORTUNATELY, today I picked up the camera with fearful expectation and it WORKED. It's good as new! So either God fixed our camera, or I can pretend that another week banging around in my purse actually did the thing some good.

In celebration, tonight I bring you: RICE PUDDING.

As my roommates senior year of college can attest, I practically lived on rice pudding that winter. (with rum. have I mentioned rum yet?)

4 Reasons Why Rice Pudding is the Ultimate Yum:

1. It's basically the definition of comfort food. Warm, creamy, easy going and sweet (but not too sweet).

2. It's so simple: Rice, milk, vanilla and sugar. Anything else after that is just gravy. (hopefully not literally.)

3. It's also very adaptable- like a blank canvas. Add rum or fruit or nuts or spices or chocolate or anything you want, really.

4. Can we please talk about the texture? For as many gross comparisons as you can come up with for the consistency, there are twice as many reasons to put it in your mouth and feel its sweetness spread to the farthest reaches of your taste buds...

Tonight I used Arborio Rice (1 cup), whole milk (4 cups), vanilla bean paste (1/2 T) and sugar (1/2 cup). In celebration of winter flavors, I also threw in some orange and lemon zest. I put it all in a pot and then simmer on low heat for about 40 minutes, stirring every few minutes or so, until the milk was mostly absorbed. I then stirred in a little cream (about 1/2 cup), a step which you can take or leave. Also, if your rice is still too crunchy when the milk is almost gone, just add a little more milk and keep on cooking.

Eric and I enjoyed our pudding while watching Bedtimes Stories on our new netflix account. I wouldn't really recommend this movie, but it was fun to watch.

Next time, I'm going to add some cardamon and maybe an egg, and experiment with starting it on the stove and ending in the oven. I'll keep you updated.

UPDATE: Perfect Rice Pudding found: FOUND. Here.

Above, we have the ingredients for pudding, minus the rice and plus our dining room. The flowers are from our friend Alex who came over for Thanksgiving and are starting to look 2 weeks old. The window above the pew is a new addition- I got it from a local warehouse and cleaned it up and painted it blue to matched one of the colors in the border. We like our house :)