Mom's Special Rice Pudding

This recipe has a funny story that goes with it... and I swear, it is absolutely true!

One Sunday or Monday, when I was in my teens, my mom asked me to make rice pudding for Family Home Evening. I followed the recipe as outlined in Mom's big red Betty Crocker Cookbook. This is the recipe I followed until something surprising happened... (please see the end of the recipe for the rest of the story)

Ingredients:
6 C milk
1 C white rice
1/2 C white sugar
2 T butter
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 C raisins

Directions:
1. Add milk, rice, sugar, butter, and salt to a 3-quart saucepan.
2. Over medium heat, heat milk misture until tiny bubbles form around the edge, stirring mixture frequently.
3. Reduce heat to low; cover; simmer 1 hour or until rice is very tender, stirring occasionally.
4. Stir in vanilla and raisins.
5. Refrigerate for about 3 hours.

Story continued...
So, I followed directions #1-3. Then I began on number 4, adding in the vanilla. Then I got the container of raisins down from the top shelf of one of our cupboards. I opened it up without paying too much attention and proceeded to pour the raisins directly into the rice pudding. (You see, I had picked up some bad cooking habits from my mother- I didn't really care about measuring the ingredients- I just poured it directly from the package into the pudding.) Imagine how surprised I was when I looked at the rice pudding and saw that many of the raisins seemed to be moving. The raisins were covered with ANTS! Horrified, I told me mom what happened and asked her what to do. My thrifty mother, who was never one to waste food, said- without any hesitation- "Don't tell anyone, we are serving it anyway!" I thought she was kidding. But she assurred me that the ants would all die- since the rice was still very hot, so there was no worry that anyone would be eating live insects.

Suffice it to say that I went without dessert that night, but I must admit I was witness to everyone else eating the best rice pudding they had ever tasted!

Puffed Wheat

This is one of the cereals we all used to hate. I think Sandy the dog ended up eating more of this than any of us! However, I tried it again recently and really like it!

Ingredients:
Whole Wheat Kernals
Water
Salt (optional)

Directions:
1. Measure out wheat kernals and pour into a blender or food processor.
2. Pulse it to your preference (play with the pulsing to determine how much pulsing you prefer)
3. Pour pulsed wheat into a crockpot.
4. Add water- 1 C of water for each 1/4 C wheat kernals.
5. Add salt.
6. Cook on low overnight (about 6-8 hours)
7. Serve with brown sugar and milk.

Mom and Tiffani's "Great" Brown Bread

Ingredients:
10-12 C wheat flour
4 C very hot water
3/4 C sugar or honey
3/4 C oil
2 pkg. yeast
1 C warm water

Directions:
Using the warm water, follow the directions on the yeast pkg. Mix well 6 C flour, hot water, sugar/honey, and oil. Let cool down a bit and then add in yeast mixture. While beating, add rest of the flour till the right consistency. Knead for 5 minutes. Let rise 45 minutes. Knead again. Form into 4 loaves and put into greased pans. Let rise for 45 minutes. Bake at 400 degrees for 40 to 60 minutes.

(Although I am posting this recipe, I am in no way endorsing this recipe. Mom's bread was notorious for being hard to chew! I can't remember what embarrassed me more whenever I had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch... the fact that it was made with 3 inch wide slices of mom's wheat bread or that it was packaged in a very worn, obviously recycled Wonder Bread plastic bag! I usually only had time to take about 3 or 4 bites of my sandwich since it took so long to chew and swallow a single bite.)