Cooking from scratch - Rice Pudding

This is more of an excuse than anything really.

I had big plans for the end of this month. I had an operation on the 23rd of this month, and I was going to get so many of these challenges sorted when I was recovering. I had nothing to do but rest, it was the perfect plan.

What I completely underestimated was how long it would take me to recover. I was expecting, at least initially, to be in the worst pain I've ever known (as this was my first operation ever), but to be fair, that didn't really happen. A bit of discomfort, but nothing that was really worse than the pain I was in before the operation. However, I wasn't prepared for just how knackered I was going to be.

It took them hours to get me to come round after the operation. Nothing sinister, the just kept waking me up and asking if I was okay, I'd tell them I was tired and would go back to sleep. (Sadly that isn't as light hearted as it seems because I wasn't aware at the time that while I was sleeping, nobody had let Katie know that I was okay. So she and my parents, hours after I should have been back, were worried sick that something had happened)

And I was basically knackered for days. My big plan of getting back to work on Tuesday turned into Thursday, and I spent most of the time before that sleeping.

Basically, what this is building to is that I didn't make rice pudding. But I bought in the ingredients, so I'll be making it in October. Using this recipe:

Ingredients

• 40g/1½oz butter
• 100g/3½fl oz pudding rice (or Spanish paella rice)
• 75g/2½oz caster sugar
• 1 litre/1¾pints full-fat milk
• 150ml/5fl oz double cream
• 1 tsp vanilla extract or ½ vanilla pod, split lengthways
• pinch salt
• plenty freshly grated nutmeg

Preparation method

1. Preheat the oven to 140C/285F/Gas 1.
2. Melt the butter in a heavy-based casserole dish over a medium heat. Add the rice and stir to coat. Add the sugar, stirring until dissolved. Continue stirring until the rice swells and becomes sticky with sugar.
3. Pour in the milk and keep stirring until no lumps remain. Add the cream and vanilla and bring the mixture to a simmer. Once this is reached, give the mixture a final stir and grate at least a third of a nutmeg over the surface. Bake for 1-1½ hours and cover with foil if the surfaces browns too quickly.
4. Once there is a thin, tarpaulin-like skin on the surface, and the pudding only just wobbles in the centre, it is ready.
5. Serve at room temperature.