Stacey Makes It

Okay, so I didn't expect this to come out so delicious.  I've made a version using low-fat milk, but a co-worker of mine is vegan and recently had dental surgery so I thought this would be a good time to make another entry. It's (almost) vegan because I forgot some vegans don't eat honey.  You can substitute all the sugar / honey for agave nectar or maple sugar or whatever other sugar you want to use. Stacey's (Almost) Vegan Rice Pudding Ingredients 1c coconut milk, organic 2c flax seed milk 2c water 1c short grain rice 2 tsp coconut oil, organic 1/4tsp salt 1/2 tsp cardamom 2 tsp vanilla 3 tbs granulated sugar, organic 3 tbs honey I used this rice if you were curious. Rinse the rice a couple times in a 4 qt stockpot.  Then pour in all the other ingredients.  Originally this recipe was for 1/2 cup of rice and had less liquids, but I ended up putting a whole cup of rice and had to re-adjust.  Here's what it looks like with too much rice, ha...

I don't know why it took me so long to make this - tapioca pudding is one of my favorite things.  Perhaps I was intimidated by all of it's creamy, chewy, goopy grandeur.  Oh well, better late than never. :) Stacey's Tapioca Pudding Ingredients: 3/4c water, cold 1/3c small tapioca pearls 2c whole milk, organic 1/4 tsp sea salt 1 tsp vanilla bean paste 1/3c sugar, organic 2 eggs, lightly beaten, organic First I hydrated the pearls by letting them soak in the water for 20-30 minutes in a pot.  Then I added the milk, vanilla, and salt and brought it to boiling over low heat for about 15 minutes or until the pearls seemed somewhat clear.  I beat the sugar and eggs together with a fork and then tempered the eggs by pouring in about a cup of the tapioca pearl milk mixture, stirring constantly with the fork. Then, I added the egg mixture back to the pot with the rest of the tapioca milk mixture and stirred continuously over low flame with a silicone scraper unti...

My mom and I decided to try and make water chestnut pudding.  I really didn't do much thinking and was really just helping do grunt work.  My favorite part about making this recipe with my mom was learning about how her mom's water chestnut pudding was the best, and that she was sad that she never learned her mom's recipe.  I think she also got her love of cooking / baking / entertaining with food from her mom.  Sadly, I never got to know my grandmother on my mom's side because she died before I was born. All these years, my mom's been trying to make water chestnut puddings and it took me 31 years to figure out why.  We used this recipe: http://cheateat.typepad.com/blog/2005/08/water_chestnut_.html And we used fresh water chestnuts.  My mom's notes, in the margin: 8.8 oz water chestnut flour (this is the box size, so no measuring here) 33.5 oz water 10.6 oz fresh water chestnuts 7.7 oz sugar 4 tbs vegetable oil First she had me peel the water...