Cream Rice Pudding Inspiring My Bucket List

True to my word in my last post, I skipped that strange recipe called Homemade Nuttose this week because… ewww. Instead, I moved right down the page to Cream Rice Pudding.

I was excited to make this one. I’m a huge fan of rice pudding, but I’ve never found a truly good recipe. Then the very first line of the instructions stopped me: “Wash the rice in several waters.” I assumed it meant “several washings,” which is a perfectly normal practice when cooking rice. But, of course, my mind immediately went to the 1920s housewife. I pictured her washing it first with water from the kitchen sink, then water from the bathroom sink, and finally water from the hose outside.

I knew that wasn’t what it meant. It was probably just awkward wording—or possibly a typo—but it had me laughing alone in my kitchen.

My general knowledge of rice pudding does not include baking it in the oven. That is what this recipe wanted me to do, though it generously gave me the option (because, of course), I could cook it in a double boiler. I opted for the double-boiler route—or at least my version of it. I used a regular pot because I don’t own a double boiler, and I refuse to buy one just for this cookbook project.

As I stood at the kitchen sink washing my rice, I thought of my son.

We have an ongoing disagreement about how to make rice. I always wash mine three times, then put it in the pot and go from there. I always have perfect rice. I gave both of my kids this method years ago. One day, my daughter texted to apologize for straying from the rice recipe. She said it turned out awful and mushy, and that she would never do that again. My son, however, scoffed when I handed him the recipe. He boils his rice like pasta and drains it once the rice is done. I am slightly aghast every time he tells me.

On my third rinse, I remembered a text conversation we had the night before. He had sent me a picture of himself standing in front of a 1,000-pound pumpkin at the Tennessee State Fair. Seeing a giant pumpkin was on his bucket list. Last year, he made the trek: crossed the street from his apartment, walked into the fairgrounds, went straight to the pavilion, took a picture, and walked home.

He says it is the most Southern thing he has ever done.

I laughed and said, “You’re just out there checking things off your bucket list, aren’t you?”

His response was: “Isn’t that the point of life? Just slowly working to the end of our lists?”

That set off so many thoughts in my mind. Perhaps the key is to make a list so long that we never finish it—thereby living forever. I don’t really have a bucket list. I have a spur-of-the-moment list. Something pops into my head, and I act. Nothing is planned. Don’t get me wrong: once I decide on something, I go into full eldest-daughter mode and plan everything. But a formal bucket list? That doesn’t really exist in my world.

Still, as I scooped the rice pudding from its pot into a bowl and sprinkled cinnamon on top—because the original recipe didn’t call for it, and what is rice pudding without cinnamon and/or nutmeg?—I grabbed my journal and sat at the table.

I stared at the blank page. At the top, I wrote: Bucket List. Then I started to think about what should go on it.

At first, my mind went to the big things people usually put on bucket lists: travel somewhere beautiful, see something extraordinary, learn a skill that seems far beyond what I can do right now. But then I thought about my son and his 1,000-pound pumpkin. His bucket list item was not expensive or complicated. It did not require a passport, months of planning, or a dramatic personal transformation. It required crossing the street, walking into the fairgrounds, and taking a picture of something that made him happy.

Maybe that is the point. Maybe a bucket list does not have to be a collection of grand adventures waiting for “someday.” Maybe it can also hold the small things that make life interesting: trying a restaurant we have driven past a hundred times, tackling Julia Child’s Beef Bourguignon recipe, going to the museum on an ordinary Tuesday, or making a strange recipe from a 1920s cookbook.

In the end, the rice pudding was actually delicious. My bucket list, however, did not have much on it. I think it is going to take time. Maybe it will be more of a working document—something I add to as I shuffle through my days and notice the things I still want to see, try, learn, taste, or do.

How about you? Do you have a bucket list?