Pumpkin Rice Pudding

Inspired by those Tuesdays with Dorrie girls who have inundated the Internet with their chocolate and vanilla rice puddings, I have made some Pumpkin Rice Pudding. It's really good. Comforting and homey. It makes the snow that nailed us again last night seem not too bad. This rice pudding also isn't nutritionally defunct. There's pumpkin and that adds some really good vitamins. It is a vegetable after all. I made it with 1% milk instead of whole milk and there's no butter in it. I'm not sure if there's usually butter in rice pudding, but anytime I don't cook with butter it could be seen as a lighter meal.

And now there's some leftover pumpkin puree in the fridge. Which will always remind me of the time my sister M. came home after work and reached for the pumpkin in the fridge thinking it was leftover sweet potatoes. The next morning she told us that the sweet potatoes we made for dinner were really bland. We laughed pretty hard once we figured out what she was talking about. We had baked sweet potatoes with dinner. So now every time I put pumpkin in a container in the fridge I giggle and think of M.

Pumpkin Rice Pudding

loosely adapted from Pumpkin A Super Food for All 12 Months of the Year

5 cups 1% milk

1/2 cup arborio rice

1/2 cup canned unsweetened pumpkin

1/3 cup sugar

1 cinnamon stick

1/4 tsp salt

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

Heat the milk, rice, pumpkin, sugar, cinnamon stick, and salt in a large heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until tiny bubbles form around the edge of the pan and steam rises.

Reduce heat to low and gently cook, uncovered, for about an hour and rice is tender and pudding is thick. Stir frequently (with a wooden spoon with a flat bottom if you have one.)

Beat the egg with a fork in a small bowl. Spoon some of the pudding into the egg. Slowly add this egg mixture to the pudding, stirring constantly and keeping the heat low. Cook for 1 to 2 more minutes, or until the pudding thickens some more.

Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla. Cool slightly before chilling completely.