Ingredients

• 150g pudding rice
• 400ml tin full-fat coconut milk
• 400ml water
• cinnamon stick
• 1tbsp coconut cream (optional)
• 2tsp vanilla essence
• finely grated zest of 1 lemon
• 1-2tbsp golden caster sugar

To serve

• 1 mango, cut into slithers 
• ground cinnamon, a sprinkle
• golden caster sugar, a sprinkle

Method

Rinse the rice in a sieve, place in a heavy bottomed pan with the coconut milk, water & cinnamon stick. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes. Take off the heat. Stir in the vanilla essence, lemon zest, sugar & coconut cream – if you want it creamier. Leave to cool for five minutes then serve in bowls with extra sugar/cinnamon/lemon zest on top, plus strips of mango. Delicious! 

First day back at school after the half term. Getting up and out was such a shock to the system that I had to lie down afterwards.  

I made up for it this afternoon though, with a trip to Halfords to buy oil for the car. I came out with oil, a new cycle helmet, an attachable drinks bottle & a bike bell. All for Ollie. This was not the plan, but Ollie can be very persuasive. He is so persuasive that I found myself, screwdriver in hand, attaching the bell & bottle to his bike. I felt triumphant after. It’s a defeatist attitude, but I normally tell him to ‘wait til your father gets home’. Since Tom cleaned the shed out yesterday though, the first hurdle of ‘where is the screwdriver/hammer/saw?’ has been removed. 

After that, I had the bit between my teeth and decided to clear up the whole garden. Unfortunately this coincided with school pick up. Daisy was delighted to get out of school until I informed her that she would be cleaning the play house for half an hour. Poor child, She just wanted to watch CBBC. 

Ollie was more than enthusiastic though. He was riding high on his cycling success: he had managed his maiden voyage to school and back on Stinger. The drinks bottle thing was a bit of a pain though, because he wanted to stop at every street corner to refresh himself. 

Back in the garden Daisy was faced with mouldy hot chocolate mugs in the playhouse dating back to last November, while Ollie was enthusiastically re-filling the bird feeder:

“Mum can I try one of these bird seeds?”

“No Ol. They’ve been in the shed for over a year.”

“Oh”. He’d already eaten half the packet.

We celebrated our clear up with hot chocolate and a fire.



Return to school shock + hard work in the garden = need for a comforting pudding. 

I love rice pudding but haven’t had it since going dairy-free seven years ago. What a treat then to make this up and it actually to work! I’ve seen American recipes which requires you to let the rice pudding chill for three hours before eating. This is not what we wanted! I wanted a pudding that I could put on at bath-time, and would be ready by the time they got out. 

It worked perfectly and I had seconds, then thirds and will probably be polishing it off for breakfast…….