Leftover rice

Friday night, my parents had a whole bunch of folks over for supper, including our family. To help my mom out, I brought over a crock pot of brown jasmine rice; counting up the expected guests, Mom and I figured that about eight cups cooked would be enough that we wouldn't run out.

Well, we didn't run out. I brought close to six cups of rice back home with us.

Saturday evening was the Catholic radio station's "crock pot cook-off", with a category for chili. I didn't have any ground meat thawed, really didn't want to grind up one of our last remaining caribou roasts... and my vegetarian chili just happens to go well over: cooked rice. Along came a big bowl of rice to the cook-off.

And along home most of it came again afterwards, as most of the attendees opted for meat-laden options instead.

We took a break from rice on Sunday. Yesterday Little Bear and I ate it for lunch, and tonight we had a big skillet of fried rice with chicken and random assorted vegetables (peas, corn and cauliflower, anyone?) for supper. As we were cleaning up after, Matt gestured to the crock pot basin that still held a fair bit of rice. "What do you want to do with that?" I rolled my eyes. "Leave it out. I'll make something."

Voilà, brown jasmine rice pudding:

Except, I underestimated how much rice I had left, so there's still a cup and a half or so in the fridge now, and I have no idea what to do with it. I'm so sick of rice at this point... Can I freeze it? Is that possible?

The pudding is pretty good, though—I wasn't in the mood for more rice tonight, but tomorrow morning I'll warm it up and it'll make a great breakfast.

Stovetop Rice Pudding

1 1/2 cups cooked rice

2 cups milk, divided 

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg, beaten*

1/2 cup raisins 

1/3 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine rice, 1 1/2 cups milk, and salt in a saucepan over medium heat and cook, stirring occasionally, for 15 to 20 minutes, until thickening begins. Add remaining 1/2 cup milk, egg, raisins, sugar, and vanilla. Cook, stirring constantly, for 3 minutes or until thickened. Remove from heat and allow to cool; pudding will thicken more as it cools.

*If you don't care about the occasional little piece of cooked egg in your rice pudding, you don't have to pre-beat the egg.