I hope you like rice pudding

Today the Genius Husband arrived home just as I was loading up all of the kids to head out to the store. I needed quarters ASAP to keep pee soaked bedding from marinating long enough to get that impossible to get rid of ammonia smell. It was also half an hour before dinnertime.

The joyous Boy opted to stay home with daddy while the “girls” all headed out to the store. Can I just digress for a moment and comment on how peaceful it is to have all girls along on a shopping trip instead of the mix I normally have? Or maybe it was just the difference between two and three. I often feel my shoulders hunched somewhere around my ears by the end of these trips. Usually because the more there are, the more mischief they can get into. Or maybe it’s because the Boy is just so very loud. The time at the grocery store was so peaceful that I decided to go next door to Big Lot’s too. Which was also peaceful, but time consuming and we had been gone an hour by the time we got home.

“No problem”, I figured. I had asked the GH to make rice while we were gone, and he is good at rice. As the pickiest rice eater in our family he also is the most accomplished at cooking it. Or so I thought. Ahem. (My plan was to chop up an onion, carmelize it, add garlic, panch poran seasoning, kaffir lime leaves, lemon juice, chick peas and salt to the mix and serve it with the rice. In case you were wondering.)

Seconds after we got in the door my neighbor arrived, thinking we were finished with dinner. Earlier in the day i told her to come over whenever so we could hem some of her pants. We chatted a few minutes while I went into the kitchen to start cooking. There in a pot, soaking, was enough rice for at least three meals, possibly more. I was going to drain it and just use the amount I normally make, saving the rest for another day, but the GH decided to use our big stock pot and make it all at once while I continued to talk about pants with my neighbor. “It’ll keep,” he said.

Well, we don’t know if I turned it down too soon or if the pot was too big and didn’t hold the heat, or it wasn’t a tight enough lid, but we have a gigantic pot of half mushy, half crunchy, rice.

And that is why I currently have baking in my oven the largest rice pudding you have ever seen. We will be eating rice pudding for weeks. Assuming that it actually worked and it isn’t half crunchy rice pudding. In which case we just threw eggs milk sugar and raisins after bad rice.

Maybe you should be glad you don’t live near me. You don’t have to worry about me force feeding you rice pudding for the next few weeks.