Rice Pudding is Awesome

(And so are digital cameras with good lenses and great exposure control.)  

Seriously, why don't I make this more often?  Probably because it takes 45 minutes to cook, and when I'm hungry, I'm usually hungry now.  Plus, I'm usually running late for something and don't have that kinda time to mess around making amazingly tasty, custardy rice pudding.  But it's totally worth it when I do.

Here's the recipe from Erica G. at Allrecipes.com:

Ingredients
3/4 cup uncooked white rice
2 cups milk, divided
1/3 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
2/3 cup golden raisins
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions
In a medium saucepan, bring 1 1/2 cups water to a boil. Add rice and stir. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
In another saucepan, combine 1 1/2 cups cooked rice, 1 1/2 cups milk, sugar and salt. Cook over medium heat until thick and creamy, 15 to 20 minutes. Stir in remaining 1/2 cup milk, beaten egg and raisins. Cook 2 minutes more, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, and stir in butter and vanilla. Serve warm.  Makes four servings.

And here's what I do differently:

• There's no good reason to use two pans.  Just cook the rice and then add the other ingredients to it.  (I know that you're only supposed to use 1-1/2 cups of the cooked rice, and 3/4 cup uncooked can yield a bit more than that, but it turns out just fine.)  
• I used short grain rice - supposedly it makes it a better texture than if you use long grain.  You could go all healthy and use brown rice if you wanted, but it wouldn't taste the same.  
• Speaking of cooking rice, I use Alton Brown's method of heating the dry rice in the pan for a bit and adding the right amount of boiling water to the hot rice.  Really kick starts the cooking process.  
• It might not be necessary, but I temper the egg mixture with some of the hot stuff from the pot before adding it.  I also add a little cream to the milk at this point, if I have any handy.  
• I prefer Craisins to raisins in this recipe, but you can really leave them out or just use whatever is around.  

Sooo good.  But it is super rich, so pace yourself!

Blog = Domain (Finally!)

As you may or may not have noticed, I finally got my ol' blog moved over to my own domain!  Phew, what a struggle that was.

The process of transforming my "Steaming Pile" blog at http://mnthomp.blogspot.com into "Matt's Maunderings" at www.mnthomp.com is mostly complete.  I need to make some changes to the theme / CSS - pull the title a little closer to the top of the page, move stuff around on the side bar - and add some content - the "about me" page, my photos, feeds, resume, etc. - but it's coming along nicely.  Steaming Pile still may have been a more appropriate name for what I post here, but it doesn't sound very professional or adult.  Although, when you think that I started this whole thing in 2005, it isn't so weird.

***

...So, I thought the process of transferring your Blogspot blog to a domain that I bought through Google and have Apps for Your Domain running on would be easy, quick, and simple.  I was wrong.  Turns out (obviously, in hindsight), that if you have the "Sites" service running on your Apps account, then you can't publish another site on top of it, because sites.mnthomp.com and www.mnthomp.com both point to the same place.  Duh.

Luckily, after a bit of digging (not simple) and some poking around with the domain management setting of my domain host (not easy), it all falls into place.  As soon as the DNS records update (not quick).  These two webpages were invaluable in helping me sort it all out: The Blogger help page "create a subdomain through eNom" (since "www" is actually a subdomain) and the post "Another blog is already hosted at this address" at The Real Blogger Status blog.

This still leaves me with a small question in the back of my mind.  My Apps account and my Blogger account are not the same.  How did Google let me put a Blogger blog attached to account A on a domain that is attached to account B?  I mean, I did have to change some of the domain settings that you shouldn't be able to do without access to both accounts, but they were not major changes.  So could I just start entering random domains into the custom hosting box and see of one takes?  Not sure how that would turn out, but I'm not gonna find out, either.  I'm leaving well enough alone!