Emma and Rice Pudding

Wretched thunder, scaring my baby and my dog - and it's only just started! The rain hasn't even hit yet! I'm cuddled up in the basement with Gabe watching Emma. I couldn't fall asleep last night so I had a bath and finished reading the last third of the book. It made me want to watch the movie again because I always seem to think Mr. Knightley so much more serious than he really is and the movie does a good job of portraying him I think. I love his outfits. I wish Matt could dress like that. All men should dress that way actually. I really love who they chose to play Mr. Knightley in the movie. He is a superb mix of everything proper and in love. I also love how he has the two funniest lines in the movie: "try not to kill my dogs" and "I rode through the rain." the thing I love about that second one is how he says it in such a boyish way.
Anyway, having read through four Jane Austen novels in the past month I have decided to take a break from them. Mostly just to give me time to forget the details and make the next reading more enjoyable. So I realized that I haven't read the Harry Potter series in a long while and I'll go through those books again before I come back to the Austens.
I made that rice pudding last night and it turned out being the only part about dinner that worked. I boiled the ribs and started barbquing them, but then I got on the phone with my mom and sister to sort out accommodations for the long weekend in Panorama and I forgot about them. So they burned on one side but the other side needed to be seared so I flipped them and came back in a few minutes - and they were on fire. Oh, and I went to makeUp some green beans but apparently my veggie drawer is too cold and they froze and consequently ruined. And I was so worried about the rice pudding that I forgot to make a carb for dinner so I basically had burned ribs ready when Matt got home (late) from work. Poor man was starving! Fortunately I'd had a craving for fish and chips last week so we still had some French fries in the freezer and I pulled some green beans from the freezer too, which is nearly sacrilege in the summer, but at least we had something to eat. It was stupid hot in the house so we decided to have the rice pudding cold. That, as I said previously, did work out. I couldn't find my aunt's recipe, and the other one I normally use is an eggy, baked one, but I really wanted a creamy, stovetop one, so I hit up my Martha Stewart cookbooks and found her Creamy Orange Rice Pudding recipe. Rice, milk, vanilla, lemon and orange zest, salt and sugar - cook it up like risotto, stirring it a lot, then add the cream at the end. I wanted almond flavor so I threw that in at the beginning to. I also whipped up a raspberry sauce with some leftover berries in my fridge and some honey. It was really nice!
Well, Matt was working late again tonight but he should be home any minute now and after he works a 15 hour day I think I'd best meet him at the door with a cold beer and a hot dinner.

Mrs. Vander Leek ;)