Rice Pudding

Two weeks ago Shaun and I were at his parent's house eating Hawaiian haystacks. The rice tasted SO good! I usually like rice but that night it tasted amazing. At that point all I wanted was some rice pudding! I haven't had my mom's rice pudding in years but I was craving it like nothing else! (Despite what you may be thinking these are definitely not pregnancy cravings.)

We didn't have the right kind of rice so I had to wait until Monday to pick some up. I made it that night and ate the entire batch in one week. I did share a little with Shaun but I probably ate 90%. The crazy part was at the end of the week I still wanted more. Don't worry I finally had a little self control and didn't make a second batch...but maybe I will soon. Ü

My mom was out of town so I couldn't get her recipe but I found a Yummy one in the Test Kitchen Cook Book. If you are in the mood here is a fabulous recipe!

Recipe: Simple Stovetop Rice Pudding
Serves 6 (or 1 in my case)
I doubled the recipe and it made a lot!

Any brand of long grain rice except Jasmine & Basmati

2 cups water
1 cup long grain rice
1/4 tsp Salt
4 cups milk
2/3 cup sugar
1 3/4 tsp vanilla extract

1. Bring water to a boil in a larg sausepan. Stir in rice and salt. Cover, turnthe heat to low, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the water is almost fully absorbed. 15-20 mins.
2. Microwave the milk until steaming , 1 to 2 minutes. stir the hot milk and sugar into rice and bring to a slow simmer. Cook, uncovered and stirring often, until the mixture is thick and a spoon is just able to stand up in the pudding, about 45 minutes.
3. Off the heat, stir in the vanilla. Let the mixture cool slightly before serving or refrigerate until chilled, about 2 hours, and serve cold.

Enjoy!

A few days of relaxation!

Well, for the 24th of July we decided to go to Salt Lake to the botanical gardens. Here are a couple of cool shoots Shaun took. I have never seen a bumble bee in real life so this was quite the experience. They were everywhere!

Nice Birthday Cake!

I finished tutoring and talked Shaun into take a few days off of work to do something, anything to take a break before school starts. Originally we were going to go camping. That didn't work out so we decided to take a couple of day "Trips."

Saturday we took Shaun's nephew to the Thanksgiving point Dinosaur museum. I had been tutoring Jonathan all summer. He worked so hard we decided to celebrate! Of course our camera batteries were dead so we didn't get any pictures but it was a awesome day. Jonathan Loved it!!

Monday we decided to take a picnic and hike Stuart falls. Although it was hot, we still had a great time. The only weird part was when we were eating our lunch a little squirrel decided it wanted some. It got within a foot of Shaun's foot! I really thought it was going to bite his heel. :(
Shaun even tried throwing a rock to scare it away and it went over to the rock and started licking it, thinking we were actually throwing food. Crazy! Watch out for those squirrels!
to finish the day we rented a few movies, and had our own little BBQ. (Thanks to my sister giving us her little propane grill! We love it!)

Driving up on the Alpine loope
I can't believe people bike this everyday! A car was great for me!

Tuesday we went to Timpanogos Cave. Shaun and I had never been there before and thought it would be fun! Thankfully it was overcast and a lot cooler. It is a pretty good hike up the mountain (1,000 feet) and then the caves at the top.

Check out these pictures Shaun took! This first one is from the hike up to the caves.

(For those of you not from Utah) There were originally three caves and they balsted through the walls to make one cave.

I know that these look a little creapy but it was actually really cool!

There were so many variety of mineral deposits it was great to see all sorts of stuff. The nice thing about the cave is that they have lights everywhere and a paved pathway with a guide. That's my type of "exploration."

This is supposedly the legend of the Ute Indian Girl who sacrificed herself for rain. The legend says that for her sacrifice not only did it rain but her heart was planted into the mountain. This is her heart. If I am remembering correctly, this the largest stalagmite in the cave.

What does Shaun do all day?

This blogging stuff isn't so hard. Some of you may be asking what I do all day. I recently finished working at Linden Nursery, and now I am currently doing research for my master's program in Genetics and Biotechnology. I'm researching a flower that is native to Utah called Penstemon.With drought changing the way we consume water, more and more people are turning to plants that are drought tolerant.

Penstemon are great plant for the job. In June I visited Ely Nevada for the APS meetings and found that these plants were growing happily in the desert and blooming like crazy. I am working with some treatments to hopefully improve these plants so that they can bloom longer, have bigger, more brilliant flowers, and have stronger fragrance.

To do this my coworkers and I are using a couple of different methods. For the first treatment, we put a chemical on the plants that disrupts cell division. The chromosomes can't divide evenly so cells will end up with twice as many chromosomes. In other words, we are doubling the DNA. This has created some unusal looking plants.

Here is a normal Penstemon:
Here are Penstemon plants with double the DNA: The leaves are a lot larger and shaped differently. We are using a machine called a flow cytometer. In the simplist terms, this machine measures how big cell nuclei are. If the nucleus from a plant is twice as big, then it has twice as much DNA. We also use a special microscope to look at the chromosomes within the cell's nucleus. We can actually count them. Here is picture we took of the chromosomes:The light blue dots are chromosomes. There are thirty two dots instead of the normal sixteen that would be in a normal Penstemon.

That last thing we're working on is just causing little (or point) mutations throughout the DNA using a chemical. It's a shot gun approach and you can't be sure of what you will get. Here is a picture of a treated plant that has two leaves that are fused together. (They form a "V" shape). Now we're working on trying to get them to bloom so we can see what the flowers are like. If something is unique enough, then the plant could be sold to a company that will patent it and sell it nationally.