Keeping Busy on a Snow Day

Today was a sort of surprise snow day.  The buses were already on their runs when first a delay and then a school closing enacted.  Luckily, I had gotten a call from Gus’s bus driver to tell me that the roads were bad.  I decided then to keep both kids home despite whatever the schools decided.

Since everyone was dressed, we went out with one of the neighbors around 8 this morning, just for a little while.  Gus had homework to do, and we played Wii for a little while.  Then we decided to do something a little different.

Gus has been asking for a while for me to teach him to cook.  The only problem I have with that is that whenever he says he wants to help make something, he can’t focus long enough to stick with a dish.  Last week, when he was sick, he wanted to buy some rice pudding.  I told him we could try to make some.  So guess what we did this afternoon?

I used this rice pudding recipe as a basis, but made some significant changes.  I made sure the rice was completely cooked before mixing it in with the milk and sugar.  I used sweetened vanilla almond milk (we don’t buy cow’s milk anymore) and used brown sugar instead of white (we are almost out of white).  In retrospect, I’d use 1/2 cup of sugar instead of 1/3.  Finally, we left out the raisins, and added in cinnamon.  Gus did measuring, added in the first portion of milk, and mixed a bit.  MM helped as well with beating the egg & also doing some stirring.  We passed about an hour and got a snack out of the deal.

Well, MM and I got a snack.  Gus doesn’t like foods with this type of texture (which I kind of knew, so I was surprised he was asking for rice pudding to begin with).  But at least he got to cook!

Do you have any recipes that you’ve tried with your child to share?  Have a great & safe day (especially if you’re out in that snow)!