New Thing #180--What's For Dinner?

Coming home from vacation, even a short one, is exhausting. There's mail and e-mail to be gone through, laundry to get washed, and old newspapers to take care of. The last thing I wanted to do was cook today, so Tony and I ate lunch out, then went to the Kirkwood Farmers' Market for produce.

One of the vendors at the market had "eat em today" cherries for an unbelievable price. We bought a bag and brought them home. At 6:00, I realized I wouldn't be hungry for dinner after the massive lunch I ate, so I suggested to Tony that it would be interesting if I served dessert for dinner.

"Dinner" tonight, complements of About.com, ended up being Cherries and Cream Rice Pudding.

• 5 cups half-and-half cream
• 3/4 cup white granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup long grain white rice
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup dried cherries
• cup heavy whipping cream, very cold
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar

In a saucepan, bring half-and-half, white granulated sugar, and salt to a boil. Add rice and stir until combined. Bring back to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 1 hour and 15 minutes until thick and creamy.

Remove from heat, stir in vanilla extract and dried cherries. Let cool to room temperature. Cover and chill at least 4 hours.

Pour whipping cream into a large bowl. With an electric mixer on high speed, whip the cream until noticeably thickened. Add confectioners' sugar and continue beating about 2 minutes.

Fold half of the sweetened whipped cream into the rice pudding. Use the remaining whipped cream as a topping for pudding.

The recipe called for dried cherries, but I pitted some of the fresh ones and added them instead. I used arborio rice, so it was incredibly creamy, but swapped out skim milk for some of the half-and-half called for in the recipe. It was delicious, and had all the necessary parts of a meal-carbohydrates from the rice, vitamins and fiber from the cherries, and protein from the milk. How bad could it be?